Diamonds Suck (2006)
diamondssuck.com
diamondssuck.com
Average U.S. wedding cost $30k in 2014, while the average engagement ring was $5600, or 19% of the cost [0]
https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-cost-of-wedding
While reducing/eliminating the cost of the ring is a big saving, the entire wedding industry is a shocking way to start your marriage (especially given about half will end in divorce)
Yes: diamonds, jewellery, mechanical watches etc are all bad value for money. People don't buy them because they're bad value. They buy them because they like wearing them, and women buy jewellery because it makes them feel pretty.
That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime.
Citation needed. Seriously, mechanical watches can be a great investment if you know what you are buying.
Sure if you have the money. The problem is that most people don’t and spend what would be a down payment on a house on complete bullshit. It’s a terrible way to start a marriage and likely leads to higher rates of divorce.
Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding".
Fight the power! Be the change!
> Too much of this is similar to "The child of a proper family marries at a certain age and gets a proper wedding".
Getting married "at a certain age" (i.e. young) isn't necessarily a bad thing. On the contrary, I'd argue that being a parent (or grandparent!) while you're still young, active, and in good health is a wonderful thing. It's blindly succumbing to social pressure to make financially disastrous decisions that must be avoided. Go ahead an have a wedding party too, but do it on your terms.
Be it most blatantly the shaming of older unmarried women in Chinese society or more practically arranged marriages of young girls in rural middle eastern areas. Honor killings are just the crassest and most publicized method to uphold the second tradition, but if you read reports of women who went through this, the first part is always brutal social pressure by the direct family including "asking" and begging by their own mothers. Never underestimate the viciousness of parents who think they are pushing their children to do the "right" thing and are not above making this their first priority.
If I caught someone in my family pulling crap like continually pressuring spouses to spend above their means and force them into debt with that line of argument they will likely have to reevaluate whether they might be better off without me in their life. A lot of people sadly only realize this after they see family members trying to do the same thing to the next generation. Differently put, depending on how much grandma doesnt understand the word "no stop it" she wont be coming over for the holidays anymore.
(I agree with you).. but back to the original commenter's point about the behavior, versus the object of the behavior:
Do you believe that eliminating (or sufficienctly discouraging through education or contrary social pressure) diamonds and/or expensive weddings would sufficiently eliminate this spending above ones means? Or would that spending just shift to other targets, such as different jewelry (which even the article refers to in talking about spending more money on setting instead) or experiences?
Having your fiance wanting a diamond ring is a different problem then your mother in law pushing you to spend 30k on your wedding to show off to the neighbors.
Advertisement based spending is just another set of problems when it develops without outside social pressure. Its the difference between your wife needing to show off to her mother and girlfriends, wanting to show off. or you two agreeing about how it might be spend best.
Just to point out though, while the example of diamond rings is focused on the female spouse, this isnt a issue that only happens with her. Pick another example and you could switch the roles.
The last option, of discussing how to spend the money, is simply about the state of your relationship. If you two agree that spending 30k is worth the fun of taking a few month off for vacation, all the best to you. Just do it because you want to, not because you think you have to.
If I had plenty of money and nothing more important to spend it on, I'd (personally) go for a crazy fun extravagant wedding. If not, then I wouldn't. If you have no savings, obviously don't spend a ton on a wedding...
Yes of course it's silly! But that's not the point, and it never has been. Once you're at the point of buying a gift that costs far more than its intrinsic, utilitarian value, worrying about its "true scarcity" is just haggling on the details. I purchased an engagement ring for my wife that costed about $30,000. She didn't ask for anything remotely as extravagant as that, but she likes it and I enjoy it for frankly vain reasons. I take immense pleasure out of the reactions it elicits from other people. Despite being very clear-eyed about the artificial scarcity of diamonds and DeBeers marketing, I still bought it because I enjoyed being able to make a frivolous purchase. Personally I don't like spending a lot on things that aren't either experiential or somewhat long-lasting, so I'd never spend much at all on a wedding dress. But I don't begrudge people for spending money inefficiently if they can afford it.
We're all the same species. With very few exceptions, none of us is hyper-vigilant, hyper-rational or hyper-efficient. There are many, many things we idly buy which are artificially scarce or inflated in price. Buying them is not categorically different from buying expensive jewelry under a cultural zeitgeist perpetuated by a global conglomerate. I think most people really don't have much self-awareness about how high their floor of wealth and personal spending is over the ceiling of frugality and efficiency they talk about so much.
If not, 30K might represent 6-12 months of personal runway to build your own business.
50% is considered very good, but in consumer focused America some people might save only 10% of their income (thus for a 100K income to save 30K represents 3 years of savings obliterated).
Yes, but that doesn't mean we have to actively make the situation worse.
Do you really want to enrich debeers? Buy a 2K wedding cake?
Alternatively I would get a custom piece designed.
It's astonishing how easy it is to fall into the trap of "it's just a one-time event", "it's the most important day of my life", etc.
Implying that its all downhill from there. I find this such a depressing way of looking at life.
The wedding is the inking of the deal, the most important moment is when you agree to the deal in the first place (and I hope that’s way far before the wedding takes place).
From there, the impact of the wedding is mostly memories, networking and social perception.
The day Bruce Wayne's parents died was the most important day of his life. It is most assuredly not the day he looks back on as the best day of his life.
Similarly the birth of a child, not the agreement to try and conceive, is the bit that matters. (Although I'll accept the getting pregnant somewhat)
The act of marriage, of declaring in front of witnesses (friends/family) before the law that you bind yourself to another person in perpetuity is obviously the occasion that is important. Not when you decided to ask. Not when your partner said yes. When you do it.
(The party afterwards is sheer madness etc etc)
Mariage in theory only has a beginning, and in our times it’s mainly a promise (signing the paper or vowing in front of costumed people doesn’t mean that much more anymore).
Some people stay together without ever marrying, other sign the papers and do a wedding afterward (a lot of churches will actualy require the papers to be done before), or never. So, if the question is “where did it start ?”, my answer would be at the point where both people agreed to be together.
At that point you are effectively together, already doing what you are saying.
I fundamentally disagree with this. I think that lots of people view this thing very differently, and to some extent that's just cultural and based on their own views and experiences.
(Basically, I'm going to go with agree to disagree because I think your view is valid albeit not one I ascribe to)
It's pretty easy for a wedding and reception to be boring for your guests.
You are right about the amount of big-day work though; we had a huge spread of food and booze and I remember eating a couple of crackers and a single glass of wine over the entire evening. This was a very relaxed version of a wedding as well; too much glad-handling to actually have fun.
15% of the weddings I've been to didn't have a groom
I've had two weddings and attended many many more. 90+% of the time is completely forgotten. The rest is good or bad memories that are largely disconnected from the service/goods quality and the price. I've seen success with plastic cups and failures with crystal.
(Interestingly, the vast majority of the "bad" events came from the wedding officiants, with photographers coming in at number 2, neither of which correlated to "quality")
"But you only turn 18 once!"
Which is true for every birthday.
Is it this clip? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUH6oRkWm-Q
Get an air compressor and bottle the air at the wedding. Sell bottles of the stuff so people can catch a whiff of the big day later.
i believe one partial cause of this is because there are higher expectations around the quality of goods and services applied for weddings. e.g. if you make fancy decorated cakes to order, what are the odds that the customer or one of their relatives is going to go berserk and refuse to pay if it has some perceived flaw? probably higher if you are making the cake for a wedding compared to some other arbitrary event.
Based on the comments ive heard from some people in the field (anecdote), this is a rationalization. If they discover that you lied about it not being for a wedding after it is done, paid for, and happy reviews garnered, they will be just as upset, but it us purely for the loss of income, not because of risk.
I have a friend who is a makeup artist who gets angry if she discovers a client has hidden the fact that the work is for a wedding. Not because it impacts the work, but solely because it changes the hourly rate she would charge.
I would ask my wife if she wanted a fake diamond and new car or a real diamond.
Weddings could be casual ordeals without frills and rigid formalities but they function as a status symbol of sorts.
Averages are mostly useless for this kind of things where some people can go crazy on prices. What is the median? Are other deciles available to check?
But I think the most important would be with the cost of a wedding / current capital owned and cost of wedding / revenues ratios.
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/weddings/2013/06/average_...
I grew up exclusively attending weddings from the (bottom of the) bottom half of that median and I now routinely interact with people who (seemingly) have only been to weddings from the top half; the disconnect is enormous.
The source here, valuepenguin.com (which is trying to sell you wedding insurance), cites three data sources. Once source is no longer online. The other two sources (TheKnot and Costofwedding.com) claim to have conducted surveys. But The Knot just surveys people on its own website (not representative). Anyone want to venture a guess as to whether a representative number of courthouse-ceremony-and-lunch-buffet-afterwards weddings are counted in these figures?[1]
Meanwhile, Cost of Wedding is "owned and operated by The Wedding Report, Inc." and reports the results of a survey The Wedding Report did. And The Wedding Report has this gem in its methodology description:
We take a bottom up approach to "Average Wedding Cost." The total "Average Cost" is calculated using "Weighted Demand Average (WDA)," which is; average spent times demand equals the weighted demand average. Sum of weighted demand average for all items equals the average wedding cost. Using WDA instead of a summed average gives a better calculation, because it takes into account all items that couples may or may not purchase.[2]
As far as I can tell, this means the average cost is calculated by first determining average costs for each item you might possibly purchase, and then adding them all up as if every couple purchases every item! Umm... no. That's not how you do math.
[1] "Respondents were recruited throughout the year from TheKnot.com membership." https://xogroupinc.com/press-releases/the-knot-2017-real-wed...
[2] https://www.theweddingreport.com/index.cfm/action/home/view/...
The $500 is a bit misleading - each family later threw us a small backyard get together with other friends/family, but we were in different countries, so there was airfare involved later, and the food/catering for each event was probably a couple hundred each (burgers, chips, drinks, cake, etc for a few dozens folks). Including airfare to visit people, and the cost of those events, it was probably still under $3k. I understand it was 20 years ago, but some people were spending $20k even back then, apparently.
Just buying dinner and drinks for 150 people (which seems like a lot, but it's really easy to come up with a list that long) will probably cost you $5000. Then you need another place to put those people and that's another $5000. Then you might want a nice photographer for at least another $2000. Add in music, decorations, lodging, clothing, etc. and you're almost to 30k for a pretty "normal" wedding. Once you start getting higher end food/drinks/venue then the prices go up quickly.
We started googling for ‘state park weddings’ and found a great park an hour outside of town on the waterfront with a barn. It cost us $500 to book it for the day.
We tracked down the wedding planner from one of the weddings there on instagram. She had only done the one wedding for her friend and didn’t know if she wanted to do it for a living. She offered to do it for us for almost nothing. She completely blew us away, making handmade decorations, and even emceeing for us. We ended up giving her a 100% tip and still feel like we underpaid. We didn’t get a DJ, we just used Spotify. We hired a photography student that was a friend of a friend to do the pictures. We got a roadside bbq joint to cater. I think we spent $3500 for everything including the wedding dress and photographer.
We used the savings to do an around the world trip for our honeymoon. I think after the wedding and honeymoon we ended up with like $2000 of debt on our credit card.
So you can definitely do a low budget wedding that’s still beautiful if you try.
Our ceremony was held at a small 19th century chapel. The reception was at an 18th century mill house. Worked out great.
If a person was married in their 20s and 30s but their marriage ends in a divorce in 40s this person spent a very significant part of their life with a companion. It simply doesn't matter that the marriage ended up with a divorse, as long as it lasted and both parties were satisfied, it was a marriage. The fact that the marriage ended up with a divorce doesn't make it less quality, or less worthy to spend more money on.
(My own marriage probably cost $30k - was a decade ago and I forget. But then we had 60 guess, at least half of whom if I employed would cost at least $600 for the day, so the bigger cost may well be lost earnings)
Very much depending on some key demographics[0], and also assumes that all marriages start with an expensive engagement and wedding.
[0]: https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2013/article/marriage-and-divor...
https://studentloanhero.com/featured/wedding-costs-survey-co...
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/one-third-of-couples-go-in...
That ancient statistic is very misleading. It is derived from dividing the number of divorces by the number of marriages. A more interesting statistic is the number of people who get married and then divorced compared to the overall population. This is much lower since some people have a lot of divorces.
If a thing is worth what people pay, how come diamonds are a scam and other items not?
I have a hard time grasping this everytime an anti-diamond article pops up. I can see the logic in not using that kind of money on a ring, but not what's so special about the price/scarcity/fashion of diamonds compared to other luxury goods.
I think the point the author is trying to make is that you can invest your money more wisely if you buy something that retains its value instead of depreciating drastically the moment you close the transaction.
Nothing wrong with that in my view. Personally I don't share they view they're a ripoff, but to each their own.
Have you ever bought a mechanical watch? I have, and I loved the experience -- from researching and exploring it, to visiting a few jewellers, to getting a good deal, to finally getting the item. I look forward to the day when I can buy my (to be) wife amazing pieces of jewellery, regardless of the price.
For me that is the huge rip-off next to the financial part: for a lot of these luxury items the extra money doesn't get you proportionally more or better functionality nor quality (2 things which are imo actually worth money since they give you something practical and useful back). It's often more about looks and how it feels. But do the people really care about the looks themselves, or rather how they are perceived by others? And is that really worth pursuing? And does buying a feeling really work and how long does this feeling last? Also is the feeling 'real' or is it just made-up in the end because culture tells you it's like that?
Luxury goods often have more price elasticity compared to other items, but they still deliver value to the people buying them. Not that you need an entire Louis Vuitton collection, but splurging can be fun. It's really not your call to make whether spending on luxury items is worth pursuing -- depends on how high your income and wealth is.
Also: perception is everything in the world. Someone who is well dressed is generally taken more seriously than the same person in a hoodie and wearing sweatpants.
Syntactically those 2 terms indeed have a similar feel to them - 'over' doesn't have a good connotation in 'overcharging'. But I'm not sure why you think I consider them to always be equivalent, I don't.
they still deliver value to the people buying them
It's exactly the worth of that (perceived) value I was questioning.
It's really not your call to make whether spending on luxury items is worth pursuing -- depends on how high your income and wealth is.
You're not claiming I cannot take part in this discussion if my income isn't high enough, are you :] Anyway, rest assured: my income and wealth are such that I could buy more than a bunch of VT bags or rings with diamonds or whatever. Even more I'm no stranger to having bought overpriced luxury items in a distant past so I kind of know what I'm questioning here. Ha, it's exactly the reason I'm questioning it. But even if it were not why would I not be allowed to ask questions about other's motives?
Also: perception is everything in the world
Correction: a part of the world. A part which is way too big for my liking and for which I consider myself extremely fortunate I don't have to deal with it often. I want to be taken serious for who I am and not because of what I look like. Also: one can look well dressed (to whatever standard) in clothes which don't cost a dime so there's a fine line between 'well dressed' and 'expensively dressed so it must be well'.
They are a luxury good because the inly seller makes them so, without a real motive (they are not scarce).
Louis Vuitton bags are scarce by manufacture but this is not artificial.
>Louis Vuitton bags are scarce by manufacture but this is not artificial.
Are you suggesting that LV bags are scarce because for the 4000$ price range they can't figure out a way to make more bags? I would make the suggestion that their scarcity is entirely atrificial to inflate prices.
You're suggesting people pay $4,000 for a LV bag because LV is limiting their supply and they're difficult to find? I don't think that's the case. They're expensive because only LV can produce bags with their logo, and they're charging as much as people are willing to pay.
Artificial scarcity might be the case for a special edition bag, or a Nike or Adidas shoe produced in a unique color with a limited run of 100 products. But, that's not the core of their business or the source of their overall higher prices.
In short, LV bags are simply not scarce.
I'm really not
Natural diamonds are a scam because there is no way for them to be visibly distinguished from lab grown diamonds. There's no equivalent to a trademarked logo that distinguishes them from their cheaper competitors. Meaning, even if you think conspicuous consumption to display wealth is a worthwhile activity, diamonds don't even achieve that purpose anymore!
I say this having proposed with a diamond ring knowing I may be somewhat annoyed if I found out it was worthless tomorrow, but it wont take it away, it's not like we plan on selling it off someday or something.
There is no 'expensive handbag' cartel enforcing artifical scarcity and preventing resale of used handbags.
For me the underlying principles boil down to two main ideas:
* Priorities. I personally value a great laptop over a great rug and a nice piano over a nice couch, so I will adjust my spending accordingly. This works within categories as well; I would value what the stone is/does materially over what the stone is/does culturally.
* Consider diminishing returns. When making a buying decision I look at what is available in the category and what the value for money curve looks like. A phone that costs 400 bucks is a significant upgrade over one that is 200, but adding another 200 won't bump the specs as much. This is not to say I'd never buy the more expensive stuff, but only if I prioritize it accordingly.
Usually there's way less war, slave and child labor involved in the making of a handbag.
(Besides even the worst sweatshop is probably better than the best mine).
Lots of other luxury goods are bullshit, but none of them are marketed as an essential part of a normal life. Nobody feels under pressure to buy a Louis Vuitton handbag or a Rolex watch just to get engaged. De Beers have effectively re-invented the dowry, with the significant difference that unlike diamonds, cattle or gold keep their resale value.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/18/richemont-d...
Nobody is saying your designer handbag is naturally rare. They explicitly say "we produce it in a small number so that it's exclusive".
Rimowa is an example where they have had to constantly innovate in order to maintain a quality edge. Service is another area - if you buy a Hermes silk tie, you can get it cleaned and pressed for life for free at any Hermes shop in the world (cleaning and pressing silk ties is incredibly hard and they often get destroyed by dry cleaners).
The problem occurs when the brand itself becomes the cash cow as a result of this consistency in quality, and businesses start to exploit this. They will usually slap their brand on an outsourced production line product and charge a premium. Occasionally that might be justified by the product having a great distinguishing design to compensate but often it's not the case - and that's where we start to think of it as a bit of a scam. An example is Church's Shoes. From 1873, they were around the highest quality brogues in the world available at any price (short of bespoke shoes) and were handmade in workshops in Northampton. In the 1990s Prada bought them and started transferring production of all but a top end line to Italy, where the shoe manufacturing was partly automated and inferior. Unless you are buying the handmade bench grade shoes, you are now paying extra for the name and probably being a bit of a mug unless you are very attached to the particular design. Now that brand is tarnished for the high end shoe market and dependent on consumer ignorance for the rest. (As a sidenote, a lot of the craftspeople who worked for Church's before the takeover moved to the other Northampton shoe makers who used to be considered lesser quality and some of those brands are slowly moving into the luxury end as a result of the quality improvements.)
I will very happily buy a nobrand or knockoff where there is no functional difference or the price tradeoff doesn't justify the difference, but often top end goods can justify their price.
This kind of cultural/social pressure was built from a long history of, one could say brilliant, marketing campaigns.
[1] https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-new-rule-for-engagement...
Diamonds are much more pure in how few effects make for its value.
The point is - I don't think anti-diamond crusaders are being randomly selective.
They're technically equivalent, but not equal.
Both are artificially scarce, don't have a high intrinsic or practical value relative to other products that serve equivalent practical purposes. Both are produced by very large, sometimes monopolistic entities.
Diamonds are different because:
1. Normal fashion -vs- concerted De Beers ad campaign
Demand for bags is largely governed by fashion, which—while it may confound some, and is certainly artificially controlled/steered by large commercial entities—is at least a somewhat organic thing that:
- (a) has a long human tradition
- (b) has some variance over time
- (c) at least slightly various across the general mainstream population according to personal taste
Demand for diamonds on the other hand is a recent, deliberate invention by a single entity and is quite consistent across the relative diversity of individuals in (western) mainstream populations.
2. Scale of external social pressure
Social pressure to have a fashionable, authentic, labelled bag is relatively high for a certain subset of the population, it pales in comparison to multiple generations of family members relentlessly obsession over the most important day of your life on your behalf.
For example, engagement rings. The custom puts an alarming number of people into financial bother for no "real" reason. The fact that both the custom and the value of the gem are "fake" or at least fictional is easier to demonstrate for diamonds than it is with gold, Gucci handbags or Harvard education.
Gold is at least valuable in the money sense. It has a market price. Diamond pricing is much more opaque. The custom was also invented in recent memory, unlike the custom of costly weddings which can also be an unreasonably burdensome but non-negotiable bit of culture. Both are customs. Both are invented. Both can be bad. Both (as industries) have a get-in-debt economic norm fattening it. But the diamond example is just more illustrative. More fake.
Lots of industries have horrible labour practices in countries where they can, but diamonds are an illustrative case for this too..
We did, however, made wedding rings, which together were about $1300, but that's because they were made out of gold.
Why overcomplicate things? :)
That's the sadest thing I've read today.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
Seems like diamond rings are another BS pushed by marketing and swallowed by the public.
Why criticize the way other people choose to celebrate their engagement?
Rituals are good. A gift exchange can be great. A visible symbol is important to some people (I wear a wedding band and I like it). But the current tradition encourages something financially foolish for most modern couples.
All people i know in Germany have just plain gold rings.
It is way nicer because it is more a symbol of commitment than a show of wealth.
Those never get out of style, can hardly be damaged and if need be can be replaced cheaply.
Diamonds are beautiful, and in my opinion much nicer than a boring solid gold ring. Still a scam, but a pretty one!
Even when you search on google with the two languages, you see that difference clearly in the illustrations.
Weird.
One comment above talked about $5600 for an engagement ring in average in the US.
That is quite a difference indeed!
(Edit/add: Though, contradicting my own argument a bit, I think point 2 and 4 - that there was deliberate effort to establish it as a "luxury item" and that today it's used to fund all kinds of atrocities - could be able to change demand of diamonds: They also change the things that wearing a diamond would imply about the wearer.
The Mossanite argument makes no sense because one of the points of wearing a diamond is to be seen as "my significant other is rich and/or dedicated enough to gift me this" - however, no-one wants to be seen as a helpless brainwashed sheep or a supporter of war crimes.)
Even if she doesn't leave you over this, unless you somehow married a Hackernews you've set up the image in her head that you're a skinflint who isn't willing to provide for your wife and it will affect your relationship in negative ways. Is your autism that strong that you will put a pedantic commitment to your own head logic and fighting the evil forces of marketing above your wife's feelings? If so, maybe you don't deserve to be married.
It seems to me that the same strategy is curently used in the crypto ecosystem.
The same can be said for extramarital sex. Assuming proper precautions are taken to avoid medical issues, rationally, it is not a big deal. And yet, besides a small minority of couples who embrace open marriage, this is hugely important.
If requiring some compromise warrants not getting married, no one will ever get married.
Sotheby's jewelly auctions. Know what you want, buy stones and ignore settings (they'll be dated and you can sell the metals), and know you're the only retail customer in a room full of diamond merchants.
Another option: get a house deposit and work on building an eventual family with your woman rather than provide her with trinkets.
The value is almost guaranteed to appreciate over the course of our marriage (which strikes me as romantic) -- and if there is an unfortunate divorce, she has a chunk of valuable land to sell instead of a useless rock.
I find it interesting that in the 100+ comments here, there's no mention of the item the linked website so heavily promotes, yet I personally never heard of until now. One of the reasons I love HN is that usually relevant knowledge and experience will come out of woodworks and share their wisdom - so, anybody ever heard of "Moissanite"? :)
It's... a different stone. You can usually tell cut diamonds and moissanites apart with the naked eye once they reach a sufficient size. (Moissanites have a telltale rainbow sparkle, diamonds don't. Large moissanites have a color tinge, "good" diamonds don't)
You can debate which one looks better - I prefer diamonds with an old european cut, because they're spectacular :) - but ultimately, it's a rock. You buy a pretty bauble because you like how it looks. There's very little intrinsic value here.
Most of it might mean absolutely nothing to a customer. But you think the price you charge is fair.
Don't conflate the efforts you put, with that actual value of your product.
Many software might have the same utility as of a diamond and may have the same price as a diamond.
Ignoring the advertisement at the end, this article sums things up pretty well: https://www.diamonds.pro/education/sell-diamonds/
I got my wife an eternity ring as an engagement ring - not because of any rules but because we both liked it and it wasn't very expensive. Been married 27 years so far so it seems to have worked! ;-)
As I like to joke with my wife, it’s not a successful marriage until one of us dies.
As for rings, we didn’t do an engagement ring, and my wife’s ring contains a sapphire mined from our home state.
So what _is_ the point of an engagement ring? To show love? I can do that without a ring. To show I'm taken? I've got another ring for that. We both do.
Those rings cost about 20$ together
I can't imagine making a website about any of my jewellery preferences (short of ethical, which isn't mentioned prominently here).
Their principle problems are price and marketing.
People who profit obscenely from false scarcity, public relations manipulation and civil war seem way, way, way more aggressive about making sure the profits keep flowing.
(Yes, there is lots of manipulation in the latter, but it's still not comparable to diamonds.)
First, diamond is not in itself useful. While it some industrial uses, that is not where its value comes from. The value of diamond is the result of misinfomation about its rarity and an extensive marketing campaign. On the other hand, BitCoin (or rather, blockchain) promised to be a distributed exchange, and more or less acheieves that. And although it is debateable whether its current valuation is reasonable, at least that grows organically from its use.
The value BitCoin and diamond are both influenced by their limited availability. Diamond supply is tightly controlled by a corperation, but there is no guarantee that corperation will continue to have this controll indefinitely. On the other hand the limit on the number of bitcoins is more rigid and will only break if someone took controll of at least half of the network.
In a hypothetical world, if a diamond could be bought for $10K and sold for $10K, where is the risk? Then it's no longer for only rich, others can take a loan from a bank and purchase diamonds.
When I pay for a diamond, I don't pay for its intrinsic value. I pay for diamonds because other people around me feel they are expensive and you've to be rich enough to set your money on fire (like you do while purchasing a diamond). It's a signal for others that I am "fuck you money" rich.
The very same reason for which I purchase a sports car, yes a sports car does have some advanced engineering but the resale value is not same.
As long as diamond purchase price stays up I'll keep buying. Only thing I want is that no other people are able to acquire them for cheap when I am willing to pay a premium. (I hate price discrimination, i've also worked hard for my money, why should anyone get them cheap?)
Please stop treating me like a victim of De Beers campaign.
This may have been a sarcastic post (?) but why do you care if other people think you have "fuck you money"? That just makes you look intellectually weak and poor imho.
But here's one thing that "fuck you money" won't buy: class.
Why should I care if that makes me look intellectually weak and poor imho? I am from old banker family, I love diamonds and I collect them. I gave you other reasons for which I collect all these diamonds.
If you ask me in an interview, I obviously won't mention these views and give you a politically correct answer. But this is the internet, I am using anonymity, where is the problem with that?
I am just sharing my views, I don't care about your judgment.
> But here's one thing that "fuck you money" won't buy: class.
I am born into it, there is no reason for me to buy.
What a self-annihilating affirmation this is! A fucking gem :) You're rich and hilarious!
A bigger one. Spend the same amount of money on an existing stone at Sothenby's or Christies.