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Comment by tsomctl | Hacker News Reader

I strongly recommend you read the article "Diamonds are Bullshit" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5403988) before reading this. To summarize, genuine diamonds are extremely plentiful. It's just that De Beers has done an excellent job limiting the supply, to artificially drive up the price. When synthetic diamonds first came out on the market, De Beers started a succesful advertising campaign basically saying that synthetic diamonds were inferior. The most interesting part of this article is that De Beers' stranglehold on the market is starting to slip; people are realizing that synthetic diamonds are good enough. It will be extremely interesting to see their advertising campaign.

The march of technology carries on.

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The lab-grown diamond people need a better angle, like this one:

Our diamonds are lab-grown, by people who are well treated, make a respectable living, like you and I. Our diamonds are cruelty-free, Blood-free, and sustainable.

This is pretty much the story of Diamond Foundry [1], a Bay area synthetic diamond company funded at ~ $100M to date [2]. Their marketing emphasizes the attributes you list in your last sentence.

[1] https://www.diamondfoundry.com/about/

[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/diamond-foundry-raises-money-...

They already market them that way. See Brilliant Earth's mission:

"At Brilliant Earth we strive to make jewelry as beautiful as it can be. We are passionate about cultivating a more ethical, transparent, and sustainable jewelry industry."

That says essentially the same thing as what kefka put forward but, unfortunately, in a much less compelling way.

I love Brilliant Earth. I purchased my fiancee's engagement ring from them. Excellent website and service.

In Canada, Spence Diamonds is already advertising (what I presume are the same diamonds) as "artisan" and "handmade".

The workers there must have bloody strong hands.

Are they GMO free as well?

Exactly. It's the same situation as high fashion leaving fur behind. Even wealthy buyers decided fur was a dirty industry, and they readily moved to high-quality alternatives.

Programming may be considered respectable in some circles, but it's not always blood-free.

Not too appealing, honestly.

DeBeer's stranglehold is already broken. The Canadian diamonds did that.

The only thing holding the prices up is that none of the people supplying diamonds really want to let loose as the value of diamonds will rapidly go to zero and nobody will get any money.

> De Beers started a succesful advertising campaign basically saying that synthetic diamonds were inferior. [...] It will be extremely interesting to see their advertising campaign.

Nothing says "will you marry me?" like blood and slavery. Carefully curated by the most successful arms dealers. Each diamond has a story.

In light of the article cited here, the following extract of the original article contains some lies, i.e. that diamonds are value-holding assets. As a bonus, you also get some sexism for free:

"The woman expects the man to give her something valuable that retains value just like their relationship. Snapchat Millennials or not, getting engaged to be married is not about creating a snap-relationship with a snap-synthetic diamond that does not retain value." (said by Martin Rapaport)

So, in the end, I see this also as a fight between the two point of view: diamonds as jewerly vs diasmonds as finantial assets. The latter, I believe, is destined to die.

The "asset" part is a DeBeers created fiction.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/issues/82feb/8202diamond1.ht...

The campaign is simple: natural diamonds are for winners, lab grown are for chumps.

They can probably even start charging more for them to make up for the loss of revenue.

It's the same thing as buying a brand vs generic or lesser known brand, even if the latter is the same or better.

Rich people pay enormous sums for vanity plates, this is no different.

> The campaign is simple: natural diamonds are for winners, lab grown are for chumps.

Honestly, I'd rather have a stone which was formed over geologic ages in the bowels of the Earth than one which was formed over the last month in a garage in Hoboken.

But I'd also prefer not to subsidise genocide, civil war or De Beers. And I'm cheap.

I can see spending extra on a real diamond for something special, but not for something run-of-the-mill.

The thing is, how many of the traditional uses for jewelry-grade diamonds fall into the category of 'run-of-the-mill'? I think the engagement-ring business is probably secure for a long time. Earrings and other small jewelry? Probably not so much. The sort of things given for important anniversaries and occasions? Probably decently secure.

See, for me it's the exact opposite.

"Oh cool, you dug up a shiny old rock that's been in the earth for millions of years."

vs for me, man-made diamonds say:

"We used cutting edge technology that can simulate the weight of an entire mountain over a tiny area to make an shiny thing!"

My wife and I are suckers for cool tech. A man-made diamond will forever be cooler than something that happened naturally over millions of years.

> you dug up a shiny old rock that's been in the earth for millions of years

They're not even particularly shiny in their natural form.

> Honestly, I'd rather have a stone which was formed over geologic ages in the bowels of the Earth than one which was formed over the last month in a garage in Hoboken.

Can you elaborate on why you feel this way? The products are indistinguishable without an electron microscope, and you stated you don't want to contribute to the evils of the natural diamond trade. So what makes a "real" diamond so fucking desirable? The psychology of that baffles me.

I guess it's the same think that makes any object with an interesting history appealing. People would rather have an original piece of art than a copy, cherish the pen that belonged to a deceased father more than an otherwise identical pen, and find greater interest in an archaeological artifact than in a modern reproduction.

Humans and the ol' lizard brain; atoms are atoms!

> > Honestly, I'd rather have a stone which was formed over geologic ages in the bowels of the Earth than one which was formed over the last month in a garage in Hoboken.

> Can you elaborate on why you feel this way?

I guess I can try, but I suspect that it's one of those things where different folks just have different mindsets.

I think that it'd be amazing to have a stone (diamond, emerald, sapphire, amethyst — whatever) which was the result of long and slow processes operating over millions of years (in the case of diamonds, dating back to the Precambrian, before there were even plants). That's just incredibly cool!

Sure, a lab-grown diamond is an interesting exemplar of man's technical artifice, but it's just not the same thing.

It's an emotional difference, not a rational one.

Just think about how long it took evolution to go from single-celled organisms to complex ones capable of growing diamonds!

> I think that it'd be amazing to have a stone (diamond, emerald, sapphire, amethyst — whatever) which was the result of long and slow processes operating over millions of years (in the case of diamonds, dating back to the Precambrian, before there were even plants). That's just incredibly cool!

There's nothing special about diamonds here. Go out and pick up some rocks.

Where is here?

The text I quoted, or the comment I responded to.

When you buy a luxury item, you are paying for exclusivity, for uniqueness, more than for quality. This is why people will pay huge sums for this or that clearly-dreadful art piece: because its ownership alone is a statement of wealth and power based on the item's own uniqueness. It says you are the only person in the world to have the resources and knowledge to identify and acquire a unique item.

This is the fundamental basis of any luxury market. Quality is a relatively secondary concern, and ethical considerations have appeared only in recent years. Think about one of those discoveries where a little sketch sold at a flea market turns out to be a Caravaggio or something: suddenly the value skyrockets; the art is exactly the same, it's uniqueness that has changed.

oh yeah, the art, Jesus - even modern pieces go for 5 or 6 figures, as opposed to the nearly free digital art (which is sometimes breathtaking) that you can also print and frame...

Couldn't you understand why someone would want a real meteorite, that had actually fallen from the sky, rather than a regular rock, even if they were indistinguishable to the untrained eye?

Certainly, but compared to native rocks, meteorites are astonishingly rare. Natural diamonds are not at all rare; their scarcity is controlled by DeBeers, and this has been common knowledge for decades. Saying "I want a real diamond because it's rare" is about as juvenile a sentiment as one can have.

Edit: Let me put it another way. Preferring a natural diamond to a lab-grown diamond when you know how they are obtained is tacit approval of murder, theft, and war, atrocities committed to ensure you get that "real" diamond on your finger. It's appalling that any sane, compassionate human being would be so flippant about the lives lost and families torn apart by the diamond trade.

It's not about rarity. It's about the neatness of something that's been around for a long time (diamond) or flying through space (space rock). It's just neat.

I agree that it's a silly thing to make an engagement about, and that the trade is appalling. But let's not pretend it's not cooler on at least one axis to have an object formed inside the earth vs in a lab.

Meteorites are made from different material from what is common on earth, whereas lab diamonds are chemically indistinguishable from mined diamonds. Plus, carbon in both manmade and mined diamonds is the same age...

Are manmade diamonds usually made from coal, charcoal, or atmospheric carbon? Because if it is either of the latter two, the resulting diamond will have a higher carbon-14 content than a mined diamond. That said, if you need a mass spectrometer to determine whether or not to buy jewelry, you're doing it wrong.

Now there's an interesting thought... Atmospheric carbon. How many people would pay extra (over the cost of other man-made diamonds, but still less than artificially-inflated natural diamonds) for a product marketed as "carbon-sequestering anti-climate-change diamonds"? That's an emotional attachment which could offset the emotional preference for natural diamonds.

You would need a lot of energy to separate the carbon from the co2.

So your "green" idea actually makes things worse not better.

Well, specifically for an engagement ring, "I'm cheap" is the opposite of the message you want to send. There's lots going on at the interpersonal level that's all about "You're worth it" (and "I can afford it") that isn't about cold, rational utility calculations at all.

I think it depends on the person's mindset. My wife was thrilled that I got her a CZ instead of a mined diamond, specifically because she is against the atrocities of the diamond trade. I feel the same so it was a no-brainer. She would have had less respect for me if I'd given in to DeBeers' propaganda and marketing, not to mention the financial folly of spending a chunk of my savings towards a sentimental rock.

I think that there's a lot of bigotry to eradicate in the business of engagement. If, in order to get married, you need to give an impression of wealth you are essentially condoning a modern wife-buying practice. With the caveat that you're not even obtaining a dowry in exchange.

> Honestly, I'd rather have a stone which was formed over geologic ages in the bowels of the Earth than one which was formed over the last month in a garage in Hoboken.

By the time it's been brilliant-cut, all nominative links to that history are gone. There's all sorts of interesting rocks out there that have been formed over geologic ages in the bowels of the earth, and they're usually dirt-cheap too. Diamonds make attractive jewelery not because of the backstory, but because of the sparkle, and they sparkle just the same regardless of origin.

TL;DR: if it's geological history that you value, a jewel diamond is next to worthless for you.

Would you change your mind if I told you the garage was actually in Weehawken?

Well, the one difference is that they're completely indistinguishable to the naked eye, so even if you're entirely driven by vanity, you could just buy a synthetic diamond (or Moissanite) and let people think it's a massive natural diamond.

That said, I suspect I'm not the only one who thinks synthetic is cooler than natural.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fR38h4xPfVo#t=1m10s

Vanity plates, at least where I live in the US, are all of an extra $20 or so per year on top of the cost of a normal plate. This is a company telling you an alternative is inferior -- more like Verizon advertising that because their network is bigger it must be better than their competition.

If no one can tell the difference, outside of a super high tech lab, then how will anyone know the diamonds are natural, and not lab grown? When they are indistinguishable, and people get used to the idea, most will start buying lab grown. Especially with the ethical angle (conflict free and what not)

Except someone else can see your vanity plate. Is anybody going to know whether you have natural or lab grown diamonds without asking to look at your ring under a microscope?

I guess some people still enjoy showing it off and proclaiming how expensive it was, but you might as well brag about having flushed a thousand dollars down the toilet for all the effect it will have on your life.

Everyone will know, because you just won't shut up about it.

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