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De Beers To Sell Diamonds Made In a Lab (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: De Beers, which almost single-handedly created the allure of diamonds as rare, expensive and the symbol of eternal love, now wants to sell you some party jewelry that is anything but. The company announced today that it will start selling man-made diamond jewelry at a fraction of the price of mined gems, marking a historic shift for the world's biggest diamond miner, which vowed for years that it wouldn't sell stones created in laboratories. The strategy is designed to undercut rival lab-diamond makers, who having been trying to make inroads into the $80 billion gem industry. De Beers will target younger spenders with its new diamond brand and try to capture customers that have been resistant to splurging on expensive jewelry. The company is betting that it can split the market -- with mined gems in luxury settings and engagement rings at the top, and lab-made fashion jewelry aimed at millennials at the bottom. "Lab grown are not special, they're not real, they're not unique. You can make exactly the same one again and again," Bruce Cleaver, chief executive officer of De Beers, said in an interview Tuesday. De Beers says the man-made diamonds will not compete with mined stones. It's so adamant about this that it will not grade them in the traditional way. "We're not grading our lab-grown diamonds because we don't think they deserve to be graded," Cleaver said. "They're all the same."
As for pricing, "The lab diamonds from De Beers will sell for about $800 a carat," reports Bloomberg. "A 1-carat man-made diamond sells for about $4,000 and a similar natural diamond fetches roughly $8,000."
As for pricing, "The lab diamonds from De Beers will sell for about $800 a carat," reports Bloomberg. "A 1-carat man-made diamond sells for about $4,000 and a similar natural diamond fetches roughly $8,000."
"Lab grown are not special, they're not real,"
They're as special and real as any other diamond (ie not special but equally real). The diamond business is a scam and they know it. There's a reason this product is deliberately targeted at women...
Sincerely hope other fake diamond makers run these fuckers out of business.
The diamond industry for wedding rings is bullshit -- it was created in by US advertisers in the 1930s to prop up South Africa's failing economy. Don't buy into the hype. Real or synthetic, it's still BS.
Give a nice wedding ring, but not expensive. Maybe something that's been in the family for a few generations. Doesn't have to be diamond either -- non-diamond engagement rings are quite common outside the US.
Open your minds.
Plastic would scratch and go milky relatively quickly. But yeah, there are more interesting (and cheaper) gems than diamonds.
"This product sucks. It's garbage. You don't want it. It's for losers. Embarrassingly bad. Don't be caught dead with one. Come get 'em, half off everybody! We got lots!"
Lab grown are not special, they're not real, they're not unique. You can make exactly the same one again and again
He means that the ones they dig out of the ground are flawed in different ways, but the manufactured diamonds are perfect.
Why sacrifice? Why not do things that are enjoyable to the both of you? Hedonism > Self-flagellation. The price of an average American wedding + ring pays for a nice trip around the world for two.
Not special maybe, though more special and rare than the abundant but artificially limited supply of mined ones. As for not real? WTF? they are as real as any other diamond, what makes a diamond is its chemical makeup and structure not whether it was lab created or mined.
So just tell her upfront? "Yeah... I don't like supporting slavery, so this is a lab diamond instead." (Still requires not buying from DeBeers. Get your lab diamond somewhere else.) If she'd rather have a natural diamond in the face of that, I'd suggest reviewing how well you know her.
GENERATION 667: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation
weren't some thousand year old tradition but a marketing gimmick thought up in the 1920s was the thing that crystallized my cynicism. Finding out that when you told people that they didn't care (and it didn't dampen woman's love for diamonds) made that cynicism bitter. Thanks De Beers.
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And thus, such things can be used as a test of whether one really wants to spend their life with someone else...
she wants the man to hurt. Not in a punitive way, but in a show me a sacrifice that gives me a tangible proof of your love way.
I guess it also means if you're rich enough, the man and the sacrifice doesn't have to be you/rs.
Anyone who buys diamonds for cosmetic reasons is a fool.
Artificial shortages.
...but DeBeers has literally trillions of carats of diamonds in their vaults. They've been stockpiling them for over a century to maintain the illusion that diamonds are rare.
Most likely they will simply start liquidating their massive stocks of real diamonds as "lab grown" because they're running out of vault space.
Life, the Universe, and Everything... in my image.
Seriously, you can make diamonds out of any carbon source. So if the goal is to debase lab grown diamonds as low cost and therefore low value, make them out of literal monkey poop. Here you go honey, a 1 carat diamond, I got it cheap because it's made from monkey poop.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"We're not grading our lab-grown diamonds because we don't think they deserve to be graded," Cleaver said. "They're all the same."
Also because it would make the successful scam you are running transparent.
Diamonds are neither rare nor valuable. There's just an artificial shortage and monopoly to prop them up. Small diamonds especially are almost worthless. If you go to a diamond producing country, they are not graded or even individually weighted. You just buy a small shovel full, price by grams. (yes, grams, not carat)
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Diamond is so spectacular because of its high refractive index. If you want a fake diamond, cubic zirconia or silicon carbide are the favoured ways to go. Refractive indices: diamond 2.42; cubic zirconia 2.15; silicon carbide 2.65; fused silica glass 1.46.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
and at least have children working at these new labs.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Actually, my wife prefers amethyst.
So just tell her upfront? "Yeah... I don't like supporting slavery, so this is a lab diamond instead." (Still requires not buying from DeBeers. Get your lab diamond somewhere else.) If she'd rather have a natural diamond in the face of that, I'd suggest reviewing how well you know her.
Indeed, how can you even trust DeBeers claim that their lab diamond really was formed in a lab and not just taken from their pile of probably blood diamonds, but here's a piece of paper that says these particular ones are "conflict free".
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"The lab diamonds from De Beers will sell for about $800 a carat," reports Bloomberg. "A 1-carat man-made diamond sells for about
$4,000...". So, a lab diamond is $800 a carat and a man-made diamond is $4000 a carat? What's the difference between a lab diamond and a man-made diamond?
I thought Bloomberg was rich enough to hire copy editors.
It has a better hardness than pretty much anything else, so wont wear and soften like glass will. It has a refractive index greater that most other things, so sparkles with more color. It is also impervious to oils, so won't become dull like cheaper clear stones like cubic zirconia.
However, Mossanite is a good alternative. A higher refractive index than diamond, so you can see the difference because they sparkle more brilliantly than diamond. It is also harder than almost anything else, (except diamond) so won't wear like cheaper stones.
But there is no difference between a mined and a lab made diamond, apart from the horrific results of diamond mining. They are both the same cubic carbon crystal, so if you like the look of a real diamond, get one made in a lab.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
Diamonds are not so different from bitcoins. In one case you get some bits, in the other you get some miligrams of glass with the difference that you can resell bitcoins. Walk into a jeweller, buy a diamond, exit, go back, offer to sell it back, 'pop!' it's now one quarter the price (or less) because it's 'used'.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I couldn't see the value in this little stone but believe me it creates tangible value to her.
If you look a bit harder, you could find something that has value for you both.
OP Here. /. crowd would have the maturity to understand my comment. Sigh!
Didn't think
Just for the record, Married >15 years, never divorced, 3 kids, all very happy.
46137
"De Beers To Sell Diamonds In a Meth Lab" which would really only be a morally horizontal move.
Good for you. Your success probably has to do with other factors, not paying a bunch of fucking thieves in South Africa thousands because "society" says you should do so.
There is a great use for defunct bitcoin miners. "Bit-monds are forever!"
An engagement ring just isn't the same if it hasn't been pulled out the ground by a child!
Wealth signaling. Throwing resources away into something highly visible but otherwise pointless is a way to proclaim that you are so well-off, you can afford to.
It's basically the human version of a peacock's tail. Just less attractive.
A second important part of what makes them so spectacular is the shape (the cut) of the final gemstone. Since the index of refraction is a function of both frequency and of the angle of incidence (of the light ray into or out of the diamond), extreme angular cuts of the gem will cause the colors "in" the white light to be spatially separated enough to be resolvable by the human eye. That's why we see all the flashes of colors as the gem is rotated around.
Thus, part of the cost of the finished gem is the skill of the jeweler who cut the stone. Not worth anything like the crazy prices they charge, but not nothing, either.
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
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Unless they've figured out a revolutionary new method of manufacture, they appear to be trying to drive the honest labs out of business so that people come back to the natural diamonds.
GENERATION 667: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation
They have a subsidiary named "Element Six" in which they produce and sell "artificial" diamonds for scientific purposes.
And thus, such things can be used as a test of whether one really wants to spend their life with someone else...
Women chase men with wealth. The ones that don't are outliers. It's the way of the world. If it wasn't diamonds as a show of wealth it would be something else.
If you think your wife loves you, just wait till she is propositioned by a wealthy and powerful man. We're all only human.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
moissanite has a greater refractive index than all of those.
So as long as they're making synthetic diamonds, I wonder if they'll make Carbon 14 diamond batteries.
And once you've got a radioactive diamond inside a layer of non-radioactive diamond acting as a semiconductor and collecting power, how about using that power to run semiconductor circuitry in the surrounding diamond?
Blinky-light diamond jewelry. Little computerized devices networking with a protocol like Bluetooth Low Energy (which gets by on miniscule amounts of power by mostly sleeping at microwatt levels until it's time to listen or talk.)
The possibiliies are endless. Also tacky.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Flowers bought from the quikie mart, have a different 'sacrifice' value to flowers bought from a florist.
Supermarket flowers are genreally fine (same quality) but the range is usually quite restricted and they're only available in pre-selected bunches. If you want to customise things or want things a bit more specialist, then the florist is the way to go.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
moissanite is the mineral form of silicon carbide they listed
You know the type , same molecule, but they rather have "natural" one rather than the "artificial" one , artificial is for many people a scare word, denoting sonething of lesser value. As chemist when i meet somebidy like that i laugh my ass off. Disclaimer : i was involved in the process of making artificial diamond so i am definitily biased.
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visit randi.org
We do not have yet realistic enough android wives.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Rubies are really easy to synthesize. Way more so than diamonds.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Diamonds are for tools, not jewelry. Diamonds are artificially inflated in price, are common, and are mined by slaves. All diamonds are blood diamonds, and "ethical" diamonds put the miners of blood diamonds out of a job. If you want to know the true value of a diamond, take it to a pawn shop.
Diamonds are tools, and only complete fucking idiots wear them. You don't wear a hammer around your neck, do you?
You just have to soak the lab-made diamonds for fifty years in a vat containing the blood sourced from hundreds of innocent victims to give them that internal shine and glow that you can only get from mass murder. And then polish them to a perfect shine with tears extracted from grieving loved-ones. After that, they become virtually indistinguishable...
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Half right. The optical dispersion is equally important, a.k.a. the variation of the refractive index as a function of the wavelength, a.k.a. the material's ability to "pull the colors apart" when used as a prism. A hypothetical gemstone with a high refractive index but little optical dispersion would show the "black and white faces" of diamond when lit with a white spotlight, but none of the "rainbows" (which the gemstone lovers call "fire").
One of the measures for optical dispersion is the difference in refractive index between 686.7 nm and 430.8 nm. Values: diamond 0.044; cubic zirconia ~0.06; silicon carbide ~0.1; fused silica glass ~0.01; corundrum 0.018 (and the latter has a refractive index of 1.77).
To visually pass for a diamond in the eyes of an expert, a stone needs to have a refractive index not too far from diamond AND an optical dispersion not too far from diamond AND not too much birefringence. Slilicon carbide fails quite badly at the latter 2 criteria and visually is a worse substitute for diamond than cubic zirconia. Some people claim that the latter still has "too much flame", but I'm quite sceptical that many people would be able to visually tell the difference, even with good lightning and magnification. I believe I once read jewelers pick out cubic zirconia based on its material properties (density and/or thermal conductivity, which are both very different from diamond - more so than silicon carbide).
Of course, if you don't care that a gem passes for a diamond, only that it looks good, then one could argue "the more dispersion, the better". Though some would object that too much color would make it look tacky. There's no accounting for taste (and neither for BS people perpetuate to sound "refined").
Someone at De Beers learned his economics 101 well enough. ... that would be actual good news.
Now if they only would use their obscene wealth to help out those african miners who will soon be out of a job
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
In other words:
"Shit, people are beginning to ignore our complete monopoly of every diamond mine in the world and we don't want to show that diamonds aren't all that rare, and actually aren't worth anywhere near what we pretend they are (only enforced rarity causes that), so we can't just drop prices of 'natural' diamonds, so invent we'll sell fake diamonds with the same name at a reduced price to capture that missing bit of the market that can't afford our vastly-inflated made-up prices".
Honestly, fuck 'em.
How the various competition authorities manage to ignore them without even a hint of irony is just beyond belief.
I hope when someone starts mining asteriods and other planets that we find so many diamonds that they basically can't own them all and go bankrupt overnight as everyone realises they can now be sued into oblivion because they can't backhander the world.
I proposed with silicon carbide (moissanite). Indeed more brilliant than a diamond, and my wife loved both the fact that it was not a blood diamond and also that silicon carbide in nature is found in meteorites. So it is a lab grown alien gem basically, more spectacular than a diamond at around $500/carat.
The thing is, diamonds are quite common in nature, their scarcity is artificial. So you are paying through the nose for something that is abundant just because of the De Beers racket.
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(1) Have manufacturing costs declined enough to flood the market?
They are much more cheaper to produce in a lab than extract from the ground.
But they haven't been flooding the market, because marking/PR has managed to make the target audience think that even if the same carbon atoms(*) are in the same place, somehow it's only "the real deal" if some child slave did dig it from the ground, not if some white lab coat put them together.
You can buy them, for a lower price than "real" diamond. But interest is lower. Some girls insist in having child slavery-produced lumps of carbon on their engagement ring, for whatever reason...
On the other hand industry simply LOVES them : you get the exact same properties as "real" diamond, but you get them much cheaper and you have better control on the impurities and flaws.
---
(*) : As opposed to say diamond simulant - gems that look supperficially alike but have completely different composition (Zirkon, etc.)
(2) Are they deliberately flawing these synthetic diamonds
Yes, technique has evolved to let you control the impurities that get inside the lab grown diamond, because some have interesting properties that are desirable...
to pass them for the natural thing,
...diamond are very heavily tracked (they are micro etched, they come with certificates) in order to enable tracking of the origin (e.g.: to try to avoid "blood" diamonds)
Of course conterfeits *are* a thing also in diamond land.
But that means somebody is going to find out that more diamond are tracked back to a given mine that said mine is producing.
since natural diamonds are truly scarce?
Actually, even the "real" diamond aren't *that* scares. It's simply DeBeers trying to release them into the market in a controlled fashison to keep them even more scare and keep their price higher.
As they still have a sizeable chunk of the diamond market, they can still manage to pull some influence this way.
If the answer to either question is "Yes", then the value of the diamond market will collapse soon.
Currently no, the market doesn't collapse (outside of the industry), because marketing/PR has managed to put a spin that the child slave labor is a necessity to make it "real" even if the same carbon atoms are in the same position as when a white lab coat does it.
The industry doesn't give a fuck, and there, the market for De Beers has evaporated as better techniques have evolved to progressively produce more of what the industry craves for.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They are real diamonds... distinguishable only from "natural" diamonds in that they are often more perfect in crystal purity and structure than mined ones.
DeBeers shit themselves over a decade ago when Gemesis (Now known as Pure Grown Diamonds) started producing multi-carat cultured diamonds for jewelry use. I suppose they've been unable to stop the technology through brute force and intimidation, so the next tactic is to try and undermine the competition by driving the prices down. Can't have your billions of dollars worth of hoarded diamonds end up worthless thanks to alternatives, can you?
=Smidge=
Diamonds have an electric isolation in the gigaohm/mm range and is a way better thermal conductor than copper or aluminium.
But *those* are industrial uses.
Industry doesn't give a fuck about DeBeers' marketing/PR about diamond only being "real" when the got dug out of the ground by some child slave labor, despite having the same carbon atoms in the exact same position as when white lab coats do it.
Industry is happily using "non-real" diamond grown in labs : much cheaper, but the exact same properties (well obviously, it's the exact same structure after all).
Keeping the diamond price artificially high isn't just something that messes with jewelry.
If diamonds were cheap (and easier to work with) then we could make a lot of neat stuff./quote>
Lab growing was born out of the necessities to get what the industry craves for without being burdened by the mess of DeBeer trying to carefully control the price of the market through controlled scarcity.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Come get 'em, half off everybody! We got lots!
Given how the human brain react is presence of either scarcity (as artificially maintained by DeBeers through controlled market release) or abundance (lab can make them on order for cheaper-than-market prices), this actually works marvelously to subconsciously enforce the former part :
This product sucks. It's garbage. You don't want it. It's for losers. Embarrassingly bad. Don't be caught dead with one.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You don't wear a hammer around your neck, do you?
A lot of white incels and white trash do. In the form of a "Thor's hammer".
Because something-something-white-power. It's also a popular tattoo in such circles.
The hilarious bit is where Thor is also a fertility god.
So what they are tattooing and hanging around their necks is quite literally a stylized penis.
He ain't the god of hammers...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Or pick some wild flowers yourself.
Like?
They are trying to harm the market for synthetic diamonds by pushing down the value, and mismarketing them. It's the old "Tab Clear" approach to marketing, a product designed to fail so it can bring down a competitor's product.
Lab grown are not special, they're not real, they're not unique.
That's a complete crock of shit. Digging a rock out of the ground doesn't make it special. I don't even get the "not real" comment aside from being a bunch of marketing bullshit. It's a diamond chemically no different from any other diamond in any way that actually matters. And they are every bit as unique as a diamond you dig out of the ground and in fact can be made to have specific desired properties.
De Beers says the man-made diamonds will not compete with mined stones. It's so adamant about this that it will not grade them in the traditional way. "We're not grading our lab-grown diamonds because we don't think they deserve to be graded," Cleaver said. "They're all the same."
This is basically an admission that the lab made stones are every bit as good as the ones they dig up so they need to pretend that they are different somehow. Making diamonds in a lab is functionally identical to opening a new diamond mine. It increases supply. DeBeers has had a monopoly on distribution for ages because they controlled the supply of diamonds. They literally keep huge numbers of them out of circulation to prop up prices. The problem for them is that they cannot control supply if anyone can make a diamond so they are trying to create an artificial distinction between dug up diamonds versus lab made ones. If you actually buy this malarkey you are an idiot.
If someone is smart what they will do is label lab made diamonds as "conflict free lab grade pure diamond" as opposed to dirty dug up diamonds so you can be sure that they aren't supporting terrorism, oppression, etc.
You know the type , same molecule, but they rather have "natural" one rather than the "artificial" one , artificial is for many people a scare word, denoting sonething of lesser value
You just have to point out that they almost literally have blood on their hands. Point out the horrifying conditions miners live with, the conflicts, the support for terrorism, etc. It's all in how you spin the marketing. DeBeers understands this. What we need now is a competitor who gets it too.
Personally I'd buy the "pure, conflict free, custom made, tailored to my tastes" diamond over the "dirty, blood stained, rock from the ground" diamond any day of the week.
Disclaimer : i was involved in the process of making artificial diamond so i am definitily biased.
Very cool.
Shallow women chase men with wealth.
FTFY. And shallow men chase women with implants so let's not pretend that men have any moral high ground here.
The ones that don't are outliers.
Actually they aren't. Most people chase wealth, men and women. The only difference is in the tactics employed.
If you think your wife loves you, just wait till she is propositioned by a wealthy and powerful man. We're all only human.
If you marry such a shallow cunt you deserve to have her leave you.
Screw solar and wind power.
I want my energy to come from the Earth itself, like my diamonds. Like diamonds, energy is forever.
I'm conflicted by hydro-power (on the Earth but not from the Earth), but geo-thermal is acceptable. Nuclear is fine since the fuel is mined.
BlameBillCosby.com
I don't think they want to drive the price down, even of the artificial ones. They just want a piece of the action.
Gold is the same way. It's really wasted on jewelry.
In short, diamonds are nice and pretty close to forever, but people ain't and our opinions of the value of diamonds are transient and usually ridiculous.
That's true of a lot of shiny things. Gold elicits a similarly irrational response from people. But most of the market value for decorative diamonds comes from clever marketing and control of distribution by basically one company (DeBeers) with a bit of artificial scarcity thrown in.
(1) Have manufacturing costs declined enough to flood the market?
As I understand it they have been cheap enough for quite some time. I remember studying this topic in grad school over 15 years ago.
(2) Are they deliberately flawing these synthetic diamonds to pass them for the natural thing, since natural diamonds are truly scarce?
You are incorrect that diamonds are particularly scarce. DeBeers has been holding literally vast quantities of diamonds out of circulation to keep artificial scarcity. But diamonds are not particularly rare and we've already mined far more of them than are actually in the market. Technically mined diamonds are scarce because there is a finite quantity of them but the amount available far exceeds current market demand and prices could be dropped substantially.
Something everyone agreed with before DeBeers hoodwinked everyone. Before that, women expected better in their engagement rings.
Resizing a ring is trivial both in cost and effort.
That depends on the design of the ring. If it's just a metal band with a single stone then yes it is easy. But some ring designs are very challenging to adjust. My wife's wedding ring has stones all around the perimeter and a clever design so adjusting it's size would be quite difficult. Not impossible but it would probably cost as much as buying a new ring.
... AI-manufactured diamonds whose provenance is verified by blockchain and supports either Bluetooth or WiFi with NFC and cloud storage for location tracking by quantum computers.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
LED-lit PRNG sparkling? Sounds marketable to me.
Circumcised people have ten fold lower nerve density and thicker skin. You have no idea what you are missing. I feel like you when I wear a condom.
The diamond industry for wedding rings is bullshit
Indeed it is, but mainly because wedding rings are usually just made of gold or platinum without a diamond in sight. Engagement rings on the other hand...
I don't know if it is still a thing, but a while back I recall seeing that there were Canadian mined diamonds etched with a microscopic polar bear to market as blood-free.
The problem with that is that DeBeers is generally still involved with most diamond sales and any diamond that DeBeers has a hand in is by definition not blood free. Just because they mined some product without funding some evil despot in the process doesn't excuse many decades of reprehensible conduct and shady business practices.
The nice thing with lab made diamonds is that their chemical composition proves that they are conflict free unambiguously. No chain of custody or special marking required to check. You just need a spectrometer or similar test equipment.
Bespoke artisanal diamonds... made in a lab with solar power or whatever.
Exactly. That shouldn't be too hard to sell to the granola crowd and maybe the techies as well as a feature rather than a bug. Personally I think a diamond that was made specifically to my specifications using cool technology is much more interesting than some rock dug out of the ground in a mine where they had to pay a local warlord.
'nuf said.
-- Cheers!
P.S. I read your other sig, it isn't hilarious at all. hehe
Can someone mod you up multiple times.
I would but I can't mod anymore.
Your comment is completely true, more so.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
I gave my wife's family 4 Cows and 10 Goats. They were quite happy, and there didn't seem to be any need for a ring.
Unless they've figured out a revolutionary new method of manufacture, they appear to be trying to drive the honest labs out of business so that people come back to the natural diamonds.
A monopolist slashing prices to drive competitors out of business to protect their monopoly? I'm shocked! Shocked to find that... What’s next? Marking them so when the recipent gets it appraised they find out it is a “fake diamond?”
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Not in the long term certainly, but they can potentially use the massive profits of their natural diamond monopoly to subsidize the prices of their artificial diamonds below the cost of production, and drive the competition out of business, at which point they can abandon artificial diamonds. Or at least inflate the price enough that they're not a serious threat to their core business, while maintaining production capacity as an ongoing threat to keep any new competitors out of the market. It's hardly an uncommon strategy.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
If they didn't want to drive the price of artificial diamonds down, they wouldn't be selling them for one fifth the going price.
Cheaper maybe, to elbow themselves into the market... but a fifth? They're clearly trying to undermine the man-made gem diamond market. I wonder if $800/ct even covers the cost of production.
=Smidge=
AC big blue lab diamonds are on the way too. Pink? Green? The diamond lab robots are so artistic.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think what I said was equivalent to what you said:
Since the index of refraction is a function of both frequency and of the angle of incidence
Did I miss something? (Not being snarky, I want to make sure I understand this as well as I imagine I do.)
"Don't blame the log for the fire." --Andrew Ratshin
I 100% disagree. But that's because I'm in a city surrounded by farmland where the farmer's markets are filled with flower vendors. For somewhere between $5 and $7 I can get a giant bouquet of stunning flowers, filled with interesting shapes, textures, and colors. Dahlias, Lupine, Celosia, etc. (Something along these lines.)
They're still going strong after a week, because they generally got cut at 5am the day of sale.
The bouquets they make are nothing like I've seen either in the grocery store or at a florist. I'm not sure which is more stunning - the variety or the price.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
You could have a cat eat the poop first, then collect the cats poop and make it from that.
Apparently, folks are willing to pay top dollar to drink stuff made from cat shit. so.. you know.
Likewise, I chose a ruby set in a complicated split-ring design. The one-off, locally made ring cost more in the art area than the stones set in it did, which I know because they priced them all out. Both of us were pretty darn happy with a custom piece where the bulk of the money went to a guy named Tom who made the ring in his workshop down the road rather than to a faceless corporation with blood on its hands.
A major benefit of the custom work is that it's low profile (which means it doesn't have to come off at work) and really catches the eye in the way a giant diamond doesn't. We're conditioned to look for that on a woman's finger, and when there's an intricate art piece there instead with a gleaming ruby in it, people are really drawn to it.
I really don't get why people are OK settling with the giant rock in an ugly setting that everyone else has. If you've found that special someone, why would you just buy something generic for them as a symbol of your undying love for them? And why would they be ok with you doing that?
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
One can only hope -- organized religion has been a cause of a lot of pointless war and suffering.
If you care about the beauty, fire, and color of your jewelry, buy CZ (cubic zirconia). It's got higher dispersion, hence more color and sparkle than diamond, and costs next to nothing. I will grant that, at present, since people insist on equating cost with quality, it's difficult to find CZ stones faceted as well as diamonds.
But if your evaluation of your ring/earrings/necklace depends on its cost, then by all means continue buying less beautiful diamonds instead of CZ.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
Wired magazine, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO:
https://www.wired.com/2003/09/...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I had been wondering when someone would take this step - direct marketing cheap synthetic diamonds.
Until now the producers of synthetics had been participating in the cartel (once run directly by DeBeers, but still in existence as a profitable collaboration among diamond producers), pricing their wares at the same price point as the (cartel fixed) prices of natural diamonds.
The cartel had enforcement muscle by having the power to keep the diamonds of non-complaint companies out of the regular jewelry supply chain. The obvious solution is direct marketing of diamonds outside this supply chain.
I did not expect it would be deBeers itself that would take this step. But it makes sense, since they have dropped control of the cartel, and this allows them to capitalize on this market ahead of any competition, who will now be playing catch up.
And natural diamonds are not rare. Since everyone in the world who wants one can buy one they could not possibly be genuinely rare. In fact the 'problem' that the industry faced after the discovery of the diamond pipes in Africa, and then Siberia and Australia is increasing the market to absorb the glut in potential production with their extremely effective century-long marketing campaigns.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
"De beers have been ruthless in monopolizing the market and creating the perception of value to a woman."
At least half, if not more, of the perception creation has been directed to men too. There is a tremendous amount of work put in to making men think that this type of expensive adornment is vitally important. Of course, you and I are not effected by this, but those "others" are...
* "Function of wavelength" and "function of frequency" are indeed interchangeable, so that part is correct.
* The index of refraction is not a function of angle of incidence; rather, it is a constant that can be used to predict the angle of refraction for any angle of incidence through Snell's law.
* To get more to the point, yes, the cut is very important in making a gem look good; a cheap mass-produced rhinestone with a proper cut may looks like a spectacular gemstone while a small diamond in the rough will often look like a pebble.
* The small diamonds an ordinary guy might buy for his fiancée are simply cut according to one of a handful standard cuts that optimize aesthetically desirable attributes. It only becomes a real art when talking about the large and expensive gems in the hands of museums and the super-rich.
* Even cutting a small diamond into a standard cut requires considerable craftmanship because the material is hard and brittle and has crystal planes (sometimes also referred to as cleavage planes) which have to be skilfully taken into account when turning an irregular shape into a gemstone. I've read diamond cutters actually take a good amount of time devising a strategy before starting the work. It doen't always work out equally well, which is why small diamonds with a near-perfect cut can demand far higher prices that the same size of diamond with a less accurate cut.
* The difficulty in cutting is to some degree specific to diamond; I believe softer and cheaper materials like the aforementioned rhinestones are largely cut by machines (which are more wasteful with the material, but it matters less).
* Despite the last 3 points, sufficiently large natural diamonds are so rare that the cost of the material is typically higher than the compensation of the cutter (or so I believe; I could easily be wrong about this last one).
Growing a crystal in a lab does not provide all identical crystals. Each one has unique lattice dislocations and flaws. Just as a natural crystal has. I grew crystals for 10 years and even in PID controlled reaction vessel, inside a sealed pressurized inert atmosphere, You can see the flaws that co-incide with the day it rained outside. The relative humidity changes. The thermal conductivity of the air changes. The heating or cooling load on the PID loop changes. There are so many millions of variables that it is not possible to perfectly control it. It is not a manufacturing process. It is simply providing the correct environment for the crystal to grow in. At the time I was doing this, I was growing ruby crystals for sale to the jewelry industry and heard all the same BS from the sellers of "natural" ruby, which is about as natural as processed cheese food. In the one diamond centered trade show I did, I gave away T-shirts that said "If she's not going to live forever, why buy her a diamond?" I was the most hated guy in the show. People were wearing them everywhere, and walking miles to get one of them.
There is a tremendous amount of work put in to making men think that this type of expensive adornment is vitally important.
Almost right.
There is a tremendous amount of work put in to making men think that this type of expensive adornment is vitally important to her.
We're told that she wants it. She has been watching the fairy tale romance proposals her ENTIRE LIFE! If the light is not sparkling off the water as the doves fly in the background while your proposing with a diamond large enough to blind the crowd, then you didn't really care about her to begin with and she will be heartbroken.
And you have to SUPRISE her with it. You can't talk about it beforehand. You have to read her friggin' mind, and if you make the SLIGHTEST mistake you will crush her childhood dreams. Are you going to be THAT guy. The cruel, heartless, stingy bastard. Or, are you going to let your hormones drive you forward? Just think of the great sex you'll have when she is so happy (this is only hinted at...never explicitly stated).
Of all the marketing tricks, it is the "keep it secret" part that, by raising uncertainty, coerces men to tow the line.
Myself, I was upfront that it wasn't a real stone. I told her that I was investing the money in having a unique design created. She was much happier.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Could you have it stream chic flics over the bluetooth 24/7?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Just get them from a pawn shop. You can usually get them for something like $200 a carat. Diamonds are worthless once they leave the dealers. If you sell your engagement or wedding ring, you will probably only get paid for the metal.
It always does, eventually. The path there may be circuitous and expensive, but reality always wins out, eventually. The "eventually" is always the only question - it can be quite a long time.
"Myself, I was upfront that it wasn't a real stone. I told her that I was investing the money in having a unique design created. She was much happier."
Good move.
I managed to sidestep the issue entirely - she went out and found a ring and asked me. The surprise was fun, but I cannot imagine how a "traditional" woman can think that trying to encourage (or worse "manipulate") a fellow into a proposal is an any way a healthy start to a life-long partnership. If you want to get married - ask them! Why there are rigid gender roles in this sort of thing is beyond me.
Anyhow, she reports that jewelers have difficulty in wrapping their mind around a female purchasing an engagement ring for a male, and that most "male" rings are butt ugly.
"Lab grown are not special, they're not real, they're not unique. You can make exactly the same one again and again," Bruce Cleaver, chief executive officer of De Beers
So what.
So if we sucked CO2 out of the atmosphere {...}
NOTE: Diamond is a lattice of *pure* carbon (C)
The problem is that converting CO2 back to C + O2 is energy intensive.
And we human haven't gotten terribly efficient at it on an industrial scale now.
Luckily for us nature has since long mastered this in a technique called photosynthesis.
And has mastered it so long ago, that any impact of such a massive ecological disruption ("invention" of free O2, "invention" of wood a substance that doesn't self degrade on its own) has long being adapted (life almost everywhere has adapted to an oxygen rich environment, bacteria have evolved nowadays [at least on a geological scale of "nowadays"] ways to digest/rot wood as a tasty energy source).
So the best way to "suck" CO2 out of the atmosphere is to plant stuff that will suck it for us.
And then NOT to burn said plants (because that would release the carbon back as CO2 - which would bring us back to square #1 and be carbon *neutral* thus defeating the whole purpose of trying to suck back the CO2).
But do stuff with said plants that would keep the carbon sequestered somewhere.
Using wood as a building material is the simplest example.
Converting the plants in bioplastics is another way that is currently being explored industrially.
Though some of those bioplastics are destined to be eventually biocomposted - thus again having only neutral instead of negative impact (e.g.: bioplastic compostable single-use cuttelry has been explored as an alternative to the current plastic singe-use one, even before EU's ban).
{...}and sequestered it in man-made diamonds, we could presumably use them to make theme parks?
Growing diamond out of plant-originated mass could be such an idea. (Diamond being extremely stable chemically and thus not at a high risk of burning back to CO2).
Currently we don't have lab processes efficient enough to grow them on a sufficient scale to be able to build whole theme parks. And even more so, to do it on a scale where the man made diamond are going to have a noticeable impact on the reducing the extra CO2 we've put into the atmosphere.
But again, diamonds have properties that are *extremely* desirable to the industry. Industry is much more interested into lab-growing than anything else (Controllable reliable supply chain.
Unlike relying on the whims of DeBeers and how they've decided to manipulate the prices by manipulating supply release into the market.
And unlike relying on the random properties of whatever happened to be dug out by the child slaves)
So who knows, maybe within a century, mass-scale diamond growing could be "a thing"...
(But then you'll have yet)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
So many people want to challenge the scarcity. I feel I must respond that large diamonds are rare and do have legitimate scarcity value.
Not when you can fabricate one in a lab any time you want from one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Diamonds are only scarce if one actually gives a shit about the fact that they were dug out of the ground. Such irrational concerns are pretty hard to justify. Hence DeBeer's frantic efforts to try to devalue "synthetic" diamonds through marketing scare tactics. This is ultimately likely to only be a delaying tactic since this sort of marketing BS tends to fall apart eventually in the relentless face of supply and demand.
However I also agree that the market value of diamonds is manipulated, though I think that most of the manipulation is psychological, easily summarized by the "Diamonds are forever" slogan.
Oh it's multi level manipulation. It originates out of the fact that DeBeers for a long time basically held a de-facto monopoly on the diamond trade and they still are a big player with about 35% of the rough diamond market. They also did/do hold large reserves of diamonds out of circulation to manipulate market prices. And they've introduced an assortment of remarkable successful marketing campaigns to position the diamond as the preferred stone for wedding (and other) jewelry despite the fact that there are other stones that are rarer and more aesthetically pleasing to many people.
DeBeers control and influence has been slipping as over time more diamond mines have been discovered and opened and also with the introduction of the ability to fabricate diamonds in substantial quantities at economically competitive prices. In fact it's probably cheaper to make diamonds than to dig them up in many cases.
Ruby on Rails is better.
Josh Kaufman explains the difference in http://diamondssuck.com/
Refractive Index (Brilliance) of Moissanite is 2.69 and Diamond is 2.42
Casteism
destroying the appearance of the gem stone.
OK, if you want a bland bit of colourless shit on your finger, necklace, or mineral collection, then sure, you can buy a diamond and have 60% of it cut away and almost all of it's interesting characteristic features ground away. But don't waste your effort trying to sell that shit to me. Diamonds are fascinating, complex minerals, each rich in their own history. I just don't understand this sill idea of cutting them into identical bits of white shit, throwing away all the interesting bits. I certainly wouldn't buy one.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"