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Comment by Hermel | Hacker News Reader

What you are all not getting is that a diamond is not about its chemical properties, but about economic signalling. Just like artificial fur could not replace natural fur, man-made diamonds will never be the luxury item mined diamonds are today. Diamonds, just like gold, are not valuable because of their physical properties, but because they are rare. If someone invented a way to produce arbitrary amounts of gold at a low price, it would not make everyone rich, it would just lead to a collapse of the gold price (unless of course you can somehow distinguish it from the traditional gold, which is what De Beers is trying to ensure for diamonds).

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Your statement is true, but leaves out some facts. The issue is that diamonds are not naturally rare, they are artificially rare. De Beers buys diamond mines to shut them down and only lets so much of the product on the market to inflate the price. Used gold vs. used diamonds also reflect the artificial pricing. De Beers is a cartel, trying to protect their cartel. The marketing scam of the last 50 years is showing cracks.

I totally get that diamonds are about "economic signaling." I also know that newlyweds who are looking at 30+ years of student loans and couldn't dream of a down payment on a mortgage couldn't care less about showing off wealth they don't have to friends who are as destitute as they are.

It's an interesting coincidence that artificial rocks came along at the same time that nobody can afford or even cares about the real thing anymore. What if manmade diamonds had come along during the boomer era when anyone could afford a house? What if newlyweds today had the buying power of their parents (the old rule-of-thumb for a ring was "one months salary"… hahaha)? "economic signaling" isn't going to save their industry and De Beers bloody well knows it. Good on them, btw, most industries deny the obvious and get steamrolled by upstarts.

(note: My father is a retired engineer from the mining industry, we literally have little bags of precious gems lying around for me to inherit; I'd tell them to liquidate, but anyone who's read the Atlantic classic from thirty years ago knows it's already pointless.)

Perhaps, but artificial fur is not the same substance as natural fur, and so is easily distinguished. Man-made diamonds are in fact diamonds and are indistinguishable from mined diamonds with the naked eye.

Also, manmade diamonds tend to resemble scarcer flawless diamonds rather than more common flawed / included diamonds. Even if preferences shifted to included diamonds to signal a "natural", the more obviously flawed / natural are also the most plentiful, again posing a pricing challenge.

The diamond industry is a racket built on the backs of impoverished Africans to produce frivolous symbols. It isn't even useful like the cobalt and tantalum mining. And it extorts young married couples out of serious cash ("three months salary" for a rock instead of a special trip, a car, a down payment...).

Good riddance.

But they are not actually that rare. It's simply a controlled supply by a cartel losing its grip.

Artificial scarcity successfully implemented is still scarcity. For example, trading cards printed in low numbers can drive the prices for those cards high.

But they are not even artificially scarce. The price plummets after purchase immediately. Go buy a used engagement ring for instance. It is tainted for some reason but heavily discounted. Diamonds are not rare and not even that pretty compared to other gems.

Gold is an element and cannot be manufactured. Diamonds are a crystal of pure carbon. They can be manufactured, and by objective metric, the manufactured ones are higher quality for less money.

The difference is that real fur is easily distinguishable from fake fur, at both a macroscopic and microscopic level.

Diamonds, on the other hand, are completely indistinguishable at a macro level and just barely distinguishable at a micro level.

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