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Comment by facepalm | Hacker News Reader

What articles like this miss is that useless products like diamonds actually serve a real need: they enable signalling of commitment. Especially if it costs several months of income of a potential partner, it might be a reasonable indicator for a serious investment in the relationship.

You can not achieve the same effect by buying something useful instead, because then the money would be spent on something useful, not on proving commitment.

Not saying it is the only way to prove commitment, but "it's all just marketing" doesn't catch the whole story imo.

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Generations before me, including my parents, didn't need to buy something worth a considerable portion of one's disposable income to display commitment.

It's all about egos, and the feeling a woman gets about the ability of her partner to provide an expensive trinket, especially to show off to friends and display status.

It's a terrible misuse of funds at the beginning of a couple's journey, one that could prove far more productive as an investment somewhere.

I am not advocating diamonds, just pointing out that they serve a need.

Generations before us had a very different way of getting into relationships. Maybe our modern lifestyle made diamonds more important.

I am also not saying that diamonds are unavoidable.

Edit: somebody else posted a more educated comment. Prior to 1935, apparently women were entitled to compensation when an engagement was broken off - http://homes.chass.utoronto.ca/~siow/332/rings.pdf

Compensation actually makes sense and is useful after receiving it. As diamonds are an extremely poor store of value, the only purpose it provides is a show of status, as far as I can deduce.

Because investing in something that's only useful to the two of you doesn't create a store of value in your relationship? Think of it as a sunk cost if you're a cynic, or literally a monetary non refundable deposit into your relationship otherwise.

Are you advocating that women cannot care for themselves and we need to consider sexist traditions of men being forced to provide for them in the case of a failed engagement?

> diamonds actually serve a real need: they enable signalling of commitment

This statement is logically inconsistent with reality. If "signalling of commitment" was a real need, why would only one party need to provide this signal? And not just one party (random), but a specific party (predetermined) - the man.

You're right, however, that in the broader context, diamonds are an honest signal of affluence - by buying expensive, but useless stuff (conspicuous consumption) we send a strong signal about how much we can afford and how rich(-er) we are.

Why does the male peacock have a colorful tail and the female doesn't?

I mean, if we're reducing people to animals, we might as well ask, why does a new alpha male kill offspring of previous alpha males?

In the past, women had to have a dowry to get married. There was probably a reason for that (economic or market reason, I guess). It probably wasn't a very good reason, and likely isn't very relevant today.

Dowries are still required in many cultures today, particularly rural ones.

What makes you think it wasn't a very good reason? I think most problems of that kind boil down to economic issues. In some cases traditions might live longer than necessary (original reason has ceased to exist), which is another problem.

> I think most problems of that kind boil down to economic issues.

Probably, yes. But whatever "economic" reasons there are, the cultural reasons were probably much more powerful.

Maybe men were more scarce in the past than women. Wars might have accounted for that, but on the other hand, men have longer "expiration date" (when it comes to mating). Also, if men were so much rarer, why didn't polygamy develop?

You could claim that women are weaker, so they were less "useful" in the past (when most labor was manual) and hence less valuable. On the other hand, without a woman, there would be no next generation, so each man needed a woman to ensure his survival in old age.

These are the most obvious justifications I could come up with, and they don't sound very convincing. Let me know if you can think of any more.

People are animals, and I agree with facepalm that in many instances, it does boil down to economics. However, with diamonds, it seems as though many people are (in my opinion of course) overvaluing the utility of having something shiny to show off one's purchasing power.

Short answer: because wombs are more valuable than sperm.

As much as we want to have equality between the sexes. This explains why we always end up with double standards. It is an asymmetric relationship at the biological level.

But it is all just marketing. Before 1938 no one cared about diamonds, and people were able to show commitment just fine. If I'm not mistaken, the divorce rate was also significantly lower.

Hooking up might have worked very differently in 1938, though. I don't think relationships and marriage were the same as today. Maybe because we have more freedom in our relationships now, we need diamonds.

As an extreme case, take a culture were arranged marriages are the norm. Then it seems obvious that you wouldn't need diamonds because you wouldn't have much of a choice to not commit to the relationship anyway.

I don't know enough about 1938 to make a proper comparison, though.

The divorce rate was likely lower for many reasons not involving diamonds.

Marriages may have ended at a faster rate, but due to greater mortality, maybe?

Isn't the argument the opposite direction? Before 1938 the divorce rate was significantly lower, so no-one needed to show commitment and no-one cared about diamonds.

The diamond obsession in the US doesn't seem very healthy though.

I've got a wedding tattoo. That's more permanent than any ring, and a better proof of commitment, at much less cost.

Though the best proof of commitment would be to invest in and provide for a common future. Buy a house, take care of kids, etc. That's real commitment, not just some hollow symbol at extravagant cost.

But if you do want extravagant expense as proof of your commitment, you could also spend it on the wedding itself. Why not go for a $10K wedding instead of a $10K ring?

You could invest it in a house together? Or a savings account for your children?

You seem to be the dream consumer for their marketers :-)

While I 100% agree with your pragmatic view. It's bad that these commitment indicators are used to finance conflicts.

(Meta: This comment is not inflammatory, poorly written or gratuitously negative. Disagreement ≠ downvote)

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