Pandora says laboratory-made diamonds are forever
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
Then our teacher gave another analogy. He asked if people would rather have natural ice or human-made ice in their water. He broke down that the human-made ice could be frozen in a freezer to a custom size/shape, be a lot cleaner, consistent in how you make it, and chemically no different than H20 than naturally occurring frozen water. As you looked around the lecture hall, you started to see people’s brains unlock. He went on to explain cost efficiencies, ethics, challenges with conflict diamonds, and how you could make a perfect diamond at a fraction of the coast.
After a 30 minute lecture, he asked the question again. Surprisingly, the majority of the women still wanted natural diamonds although the number was less than the original amount that raised their hand. That was the point where I realized the strength of diamonds product branding.
Sounds like it wasn't because it didn't convince many people!
There is no difference in the quality of those pens. They both work the same, and using the writer's pen will not make you a better writer by itself.
I personally would not buy a natural diamond because of the ethical issues, but I do understand the students who feel there is a difference.
Does anyone, other than geologists of course, really care about the back-story of the diamond, how it was created and how it was mined? Or are they just hanging on to an idea that some of them are "real" and some "not real" for the purposes of social signalling?
If the latter, I would consider this much more changeable over time.
Yes, very much so, as is the case with all lifestyle products. People want to believe that they’re buying something special.
I've never met anyone that talked about it at all. Maybe I don't have conversations about diamonds very often, but people only ever seemed concerned that they were 'real', and latterly that they were conflict-free.
> People want to believe that they’re buying something special.
What if it turns out they're not?
Buyers remorse or post-rationalization.
Lab grown diamonds are diamonds. Whether one comes out of the ground or from a lab, maybe they aren’t that special.
A lot of economists have argued that the "value" of something is based on the labor cost of production. So given that viewpoint, mined diamonds would be worth more than lab ones, even if they were identical in every way (yes, I also think this is silly, but that's what the market's indicating even today).
(And yes, those economists would tend to get laughed out of the room these days)
Then folks would be buying something ethical and more glamorous. Maybe philanthropic donations could be associated to revitalize areas hurt by the diamond industry to further tell a story for the celebrities and consumers.
Something like Naturally Famous Treasure, or NFT for short?
There are a lot of people who would consider a car, diamond, piece of art, etc that has "a decently long chain of people had to stick their neck out doing criminal things" in its provenance to be a more interesting than an equivalent "produced in a high tech factory".
I think even with synthetic diamonds being 100% on par in every way there will still be a market for ethically and legally gray diamonds because people want to know they're buying something that someone toiled and/or took risks for.
I'd say price will probably be the determining factor but luxury status symbol markets don't work that way.
A story about geology and how it was dug up? The same story as literally every other diamond wearer?
How it was mined, where it came from, which company sells it and how all of that is marketed to the world (not even really to the owner) is the value of all of this.
It’s like sending a unicef postcard, what matters the most would be the effect on the receiver and how the sender feels about it. The object itself isn’t on the front stage.
I've never met anyone that cares about that at all, beyond 'conflict-free'.
The elephant in that lecture hall was probably the hypocrisy.
I think if you still raise a hand after hearing all that, the issue isn't branding at all. It's narcissim, that people have to die so you can maintain the illusion of...of what?
That's the difference.
I'd rather toss 10k into a couple emergency fund then waste it on a ring. Most marriages collapse due to money. I recall in my younger days I was with a girl and she dragged me to Brooks Brothers. As a child of poverty and evictions I couldn't understand why anyone who need to spend this much money on a shirt.
Even making well into the 6 figures I shop at Old Navy. Hell, my favorite partner thus far was making 200k or so, and she still used an IPhone 6.
Maybe whenever I meet someone new I'll ask on the first date, would you rather have 10k saved in an emergency fund or a shinny conflict rock ? Her response will tell me everything I need to know.
I don't know about asking that on the very first date, but it is very reasonable (essential even) to make sure your priorities and your partner's priorities match up.
Some studies on factors leading to divorce do put 'money' (and particularly attitudes regarding money) as the biggest single factor, but I'm not familiar with any study (let alone a consensus) that it's a leading factor in 'most' divorces.
Children also includes weirdly a large subset on how to raise children (when marrying someone of a different faith)
In these days, some of them come from marriage counseling statistics undertaken during divorce (some states require it before disolving a marriage).
There is some specific research from small N groups where N=52 for example (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4012696/)
Thanks for the link as well, I found it interesting. :-)
I don't think you have mentally left that state of mind. Thinking you need $10,000 in cash and telling everyone on the first date tells them this guy will never save more than 10,000 and he is cheap with his money. Might work for some but perhaps you are putting out a negative signal.
All of those people in 2008 who lost their houses in my neighborhood had the left that state of mind.
Exactly, anyone I'm with needs to understand the difference between my money and their money. I've had no problem dating plenty of fantastic girls who have their own careers( real life only and I tend to date a few years older ). That's by far my number one priority when meeting someone, have your own life together first.
$10,000 was a random number, maybe the pre-marriage emergency fund needs to be $50,000, 100,000 ? In my mind having that money saved up says when life happens, and life will happen you'll be okay.
Plus I think you're being a bit unfair about his first date comment. It seemed like it was more of a quip to explain his position, than an actual plan
I remember, a few months in a relationship, lightly making fun of some of her "cheap" behaviours (which I really appreciated) and her getting very offended. At that point I realised I never communicated I was a massive cheapskate and I asked her if she thought she was more frugal than me. It turns out she thought so!
I think I definitely proved I won the frugality contest, but I learnt over time to mask this to appear more interesting and charming.
Money is not the only resource that count and that's worthy of optimising for; time and reputation are important as well.
I don't think it's a radical claim that most want blood diamonds precisely because lot's of people suffered and possibly died for it.
That's the elephant in the room.
The sadistic narcissism of which I speak.
> Maybe whenever I meet someone new I'll ask on the first date, would you rather have 10k saved in an emergency fund or a shinny conflict rock ? Her response will tell me everything I need to know.
Haha. I doubt her answer is going to deter you from the path you intended. You'll probably still be mesmerized so maybe this is 29th date, watching netflix after getting laid type of talk.
Is money the cause or symptom? Unrealistic expectations of overflowing love clouding rational judgement of lifelong partnerships? I feel money is too simple an explaination - as if the foundation of the marriage was money in which case it was dead before it even started.
Does it make sense? No, but humans are emotional animals that seek for differentiation.
So the value lies with the fact that it was made by slaves?....
Fast fashion is literally harming the earth, screw everyone who says that and thinks about that, I absolutely reject it and we SHOULD apply logic to fashion choices that directly harm us and our planet.
My hi-fi system is 30 years old. My Squeezeboxes (audio players) are 15 years old. Laptop (running LXDE) is 13 years old. TV is 10 years old (only 720p but free of “smart” aka tracking features). The mobile phone is about 7 years old; this one is due for replacement and while I usually buy second-hand, I am considering a Fairphone 3. The most recent device I bought (a year ago) was an Apple TV which I’d hope to be using for at least another 5 years.
It's mostly artificial scarcity, even sneakers that weren't personally worn by a celebrity sell for thousands when they are of a limited run with particular high demand.
Throw in scamming as a service, the FOMO marketing that has become ever-present, and the result is brands being able to charge absurd prices for mundane items.
I talked about this with my wife recently, and even though she had a vague idea of the horrors that mined diamonds bring, she'd still continue to buy/want mined diamonds. She sees mined diamonds as more "real", and finds it difficult to believe that her diamonds in particular would be part of the problem - as if it somehow would only affect diamonds purchased in dodgy, back-room deals. She seems to think it's OK because "everyone else does it". No amount of discussion of verifiable facts seems to change that view; indeed, she got quite annoyed with me, and didn't want to discuss it any further.
A large part of the problem is conditioning, through both advertising and tradition. In the west, we are conditioned from an early age to believe that "diamonds are a girl's best friend", that women should accept nothing less that a "real" diamond, and that men should spend some silly multiple of their salary when buying such a diamond. Diamonds are synonymous with luxury.
What we really need is a big, sustained campaign against mined diamonds, really putting the horrors in the faces of potential customers, so they have to accept the damage mined diamonds cause,and accept that they are part of the problem. Such a campaign probably needs to be fronted by celebrities - inspirational figures that people will listen to.
I whole-heartedly applaud Pandora for making the first move here - hopefully this will help to break the stalemate and be the start of a much bigger movement.
Obviously you and I see that even that line of reasoning alone jacks up demand for an awful business, but not all people have the capacity to reason that abstractly about how their behaviour plays a part in a very big aggregate.
----
My wife did get this after some discussion, but we got stuck with a different problem: we asked virtually every local jeweller to create something with a lab-created diamond (or even a different shiny rock entirely) and all of them -- to our astonishment -- refused.
They only work with mined diamonds from the suppliers they have long-standing contracts with and can ensure are as ethical as they come. I'm sure they have their reasons but that was very frustrating.
I would guess it's profit, with mined diamonds being more expensive than engineered ones?
ooooo now there is a signal. Putting in the time and effort to find/get a jeweller to make me a custom ring with a lab-created diamond when no one will. Unique, expensive. Not something he can just order from the internet.
Because lets just cut to the chase. The diamond is all about the story, the signal and what it represents, not what it is.
Although it looks like Gemesis, the company I bought the synthetic diamonds from, has pivoted and rebranded as Pure Grown Diamonds, and sells wholesale rather than retail now.
Totally agree with your campaign idea too. I think a lot of it is social signaling and if there was enough of a big movement against them, diamonds would be "canceled" pretty quickly. Social pressure is one of the great guiding forces we have (for better and for worse).
A normal person who repeatedly throws aside a full heart in favor of facts will not wake up singing for many years. There needs to be a new song to replace the old, something as emotionally filling as DeBeers shadow demons dancing to a swelling string section.
If I could rephrase it a bit more clinically, the signaling of fitness (wealth, social status, etc) is important to the human mating rituals. And diamonds are integral to that in a some cultures. That underlying need is probably innate will not change. Therefore, as you said, you can't just say "NO", it needs to be replaced with something else.
Getting people to care about who’s winning and losing in a production lifecycle seems like something that doesn’t get fixed initially with the diamond-buying crowd when the shoe-buying consumers don’t even care.
I think what I’m struggling to get at is that the diamond-buying population at least have these earnest “noble ideals” of love, unity, etc represented by this product for which at some low level the sacrifice and blood may _add_ value (god knows what unconscious calculus is at work in the mind of a grown princess). Compare this to a pair of crap tennis shoes that you’re going to throw away, where they are completely utilitarian, replaceable, and you have zero emotional investment in what they represent. The suffering represented by the product offers nothing other than the blatant profit of the consumer. And we can’t wrest the shoes from the consumer’s hands no matter what is said about the abysmal conditions that produced them.
All of these conditions in the production of these products are known. Nobody can claim ignorance in the first world. If the population at large hasn’t had a moment of moral clarity by now, I’m not sure I’d hold my breath any longer. Either systemically the culture needs to be more open to moral awakenings (a hard sell in a world defined by deconstructionism) or a new and acceptable critique of globalism at a policy level needs radical change.
Just my .02 but I’ve been hearing the same convo about diamonds since I was a kid and it’s as sad as hearing the rationalizing of any addict.
The suicide rate in those factories is greater than zero but is not high at all. You picked the wrong analogy.
You can iterate on the above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond would be a starting point for getting more specifics. Hmm, it says: "A third method, known as detonation synthesis, entered the diamond market in the late 1990s. In this process, the detonation of carbon-containing explosives creates nanometer-sized diamond grains." Fuck yeah, my diamond was made with high explosives! Might prefer one of those because of the awesome factor.
In the west, the US or the anglosphere? Because I only know this from Hollywood movies.
https://danwin.com/2010/08/how-de-beers-diamonds-won-over-th...
The scope of their mass brain washing is indeed staggering. Heck I have a good friend in the jewelry business and we still get into heated discussions about how he feels there is nothing wrong and how he is providing value as an agent of Debears brainwashing. It is pretty disgusting.
Yes they don't because of marketing.
If we want to really change this, the narrative, the media and marketing has to change from: Earth Diamonds = Status of eternity and "foreverness" to Earth Diamonds = Status of child abuse.
With massive campaigns from media and celebrities, people can be shamed into changing their behaviour.
We need to stop treating women as children and objects to be "bought out" with diamonds and gifts. The days of women needing men to "provide" for them are long gone.
But I digress.. more to your point, just because something is a tradition, it doesn't mean we should throw our hands up and accept the status quo.
Change requires bravery.
In the end, we just can't seem to take our eyes and minds off the shiny things, even knowing that we're merely gazing at the glare of hubris.
Based on San Francisco's experience, I'd say spending other people's money isn't enough to do much about the homeless issue. Further, I suspect a startup that moves the economy upwards results in citizens with more disposable income to donate to good causes. Ideally, the competition for those funds leads to increased effectiveness from those good causes (because I'm not going to donate to someone who doesn't efficiently get food to the mouths of the hungry so to speak).
Also, the "shiny things" often bring tangible and less tangible benefits (e.g. technology advances, societal celebration of science & engineering), whereas quite a bit of our social programs seem like money pits with no real outcome other than feeling good about burning all that time and treasure (see above re: SF and the homeless). I'm reminded of people who protested going to the Moon, arguing instead that the funding should be spent on welfare programs. The difference is that going to the Moon is a quantifiable win and also brings interesting benefits to society, and there is an end state where the job is done. Welfare, as it is currently structured, does nothing to actually solve the problem of systemic poverty so its job is never done. It's not even clear if increasing or decreasing funding really does much about the problem.
The anti-moon mission people were right, in the end. The advances solely attributable to it were few (to ask someone to name them is akin to asking a government official what assets and missions, exactly, Edward Snowden's leaks compromised), and NASA and the government abandoned the effort not when the possibility of further advances dried up, but when the prestige of beating the USSR wore off. This, of course, is the fundamental issue: that the shininess blinds and then dulls, leaving the problems that were ignored still unaddressed. The people protesting the moon missions were:
*Environmental advocates
*Anti-war protestors
*Black and PoC Civil Rights advocates
Consider then, in good faith, the troubles that continue to rock our society, some 40-50 years hence. Interesting parallels.
On the other hand, welfare works. Full stop.
Like I said, we've been conditioned. And by "we", I mean "you."
Almost everyone buys clothes, electronics made with child labor.
I think you might have clothes made with child labor as well.
Why do you draw the line at diamonds?
The author is outraged at the hypocrisy, without realising the value of diamonds is that they are scarce. If you can produce them artificially, they are no longer in the same league with the scarce ones.
This is a thing that people do, so it's not fair to assume that the parson you're having the discussion with is a hypocrite.
Reminds me when they closed a china assembly factory because of online activism, and the chinese people there started starving, because they had no other income. They would gladly have their factory back.
Also most of the help for african countries does the following: 1) There are 1 Million people starving 2) a lot of food is sent there 3) There are now 2 million people starving
"Okay class, a very small percentage of diamonds are made via child labour, a few poor people dead, terrorist groups etc while most are made via modern mining practice. That is where diamonds come from. On the other hand, a successful marketing campaign has occurred declaring that all natural diamonds are made by torturing children. It may well be that your iPhone's supply chain causes more misery. How many would still want a natural diamond because diamonds are forever?"
Botswana has used the opportunity of being so diamond-rich to require that diamonds be cut/polished in the country, enabling hundreds of their citizens to learn a new high-paying trade. Many countries require the sale of their stones happen inside the country rather than having all the stones immediately shipped off to European trading floors.
The real hypocrisy is people complaining about an industry they really know nothing about.
You sure you want people to really know about "the industry"?!?
I view Debears as industrious as the Casinos. They produce nothing but feelings created by predatory practices at an astonishingly high price.
“Produce nothing but feelings” — that’s called advertising. Same as Coke, BMW and Tumi.
That sounds more stable than many South American countries, even Russia.
Be it diamonds, sports cars, etc doesnt matter.
Might be an American thing? My parents spent about 1 month worth of my dad's salary on two wedding rings a long time ago. My dad actually wanted to buy a far more expensive ring for my mom, but she insisted to keep it simple and "cheap" and "unproblematic" to wear. Same story in the rest of the family.
Friends (usually a lot younger than my parents) spend even less on rings, I'd estimate 400-600 EUR per ring from what I keep hearing.
I've heard about that two months rule before, in American TV shows and movies, never thought about it. Now I wonder if it's really an American thing, or if people around me are just cheapskates :P
Here's some ads from the 1980s advocating for two months salary -
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/media/images/74843000/jpg/...
http://cdn.cavemancircus.com//wp-content/uploads/2020/08/dia...
https://yourdiamondteacher.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/De...
Most people I know don't really care at all (I'm 25 for reference), since they generally don't have the money to waste on such frivolous purchases.
Oh, they are being sneaky and getting into news too:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/13/why-you-dont-need-to-spend-t....
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27371208
>These two achievements - making the diamond ring an essential part of getting married and dictating how much a man should pay - make it one of the most successful bits of marketing ever undertaken, says Dr TC Melewar, professor of marketing and strategy at Middlesex University.
>"They invented a tradition which captured some latent desire to mark this celebration of love," he says. Once the tradition had been created, they could put a price on it - such as a month or two's salary. And men, says Melewar, would pay whatever was expected because it was a "highly emotive" purchase.
Of course, it's all optional, jewelery purchases are not a mandatory part of getting married, I (heterosexual woman) have been married for a decade and neither of us purchased any sort of jewelery.
I got my wife a custom designed ring with a fairly large moissanite stone for ~$1,200 all in, and we spent about $2,000-$3,000 on the wedding itself. My wife actually would have been upset with me if I had gotten her a real diamond. Not so much because of concerns over conflict (though she did care about that) but because she felt that spending that much on a useless stone was outright stupid.
That might also be the reason. If something is cheaper, it feels inferior.
Also with diamonds it's probably a factor that the fiancé is expected to present serious intents with a deeper monetary investment. "Look honey, it's an ethical, clean diamond and only cost 1/20th of a dirty one" sad, but feels wrong.
Edit: I also remember a guy at dinner party bragging about buying a 5000EUR ring, it goes both ways.
Then he can spend the same money for a bigger diamond ? That would give also more bragging rights to the future wife (nobody will come and ask if it is a natural or artificial one).
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
Also:
Sentiments can change. Diamonds will not become unemotional, but the emotional reaction will likely go into reverse soon.
In fact, Diamonds are some of the most common gems in nature!
https://www.gemsociety.org/article/are-diamonds-really-rare/
Sounds like a pretty sexist thing to do. The same question can be asked without putting women on the spot. "If you were to buy a diamond, what would you rather choose?"
In western culture, still today I think,majority of men would be buying and majority of women would be receiving diamonds. It would be interesting if this affects answers. Would a buyer go for more practical cheaper option while receiver goes for more expensive traditional options? Or a different split completely , or none? I think it'd be a fascinating exercise.
I found majority of my men friends argued it's the same diamond without the ethical concerns if you go man-made, while majority of my women friends chose natural (reasons included social pressure, the story, and so on).
Anecdotes aren't proof. But perhaps there is something to looking at this from a gendered (proxy for giving vs. receiving?) lens.
This phenomenon has to be more localized than Western culture (the worldwide diamond consumption hints at it being US-specific?) - I for example don't know anyone who even contemplated buying one for proposing. Granted, this is purely anectotal, but over extended family and workplace colleagues this includes a bunch of milieus.
My family in Europe doesn't have the whole engagement ring concept.
If the professor is making an argument that one choice is clearly the rational choice, and then highlights differences in how different groups make that choice, then they are directly implying that some groups are more irrational than others.
Try doing that with a diamond. You walk out of the diamond showroom with it, and its resale value plummets to the value of the base metals, the work of the setting, plus a small fraction for what you had just paid for the diamond.
So the diamond is worth whatever it can be bought / sold for online. If walking out of the store drops it’s value, you’re donating to the store.
Buy an exactly equivalent stone elsewhere if the price drops too much after you buy it.
I wish there was a trustworthy clearinghouse/reseller for used jewelry and gemstones. That would be fantastic.
Forced child labour used to extract natural diamonds in some parts of the world is also real.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_the_diamond_in...
So basically... proof of work?
It used to be "sunk cost" for a man, since until recently it was expected that if you break the engagement your ex-fiance would keep the ring (right now in most of the states law require it to be returned). Expensive wedding party is another sunk cost.
Is this true? That would be very surprising, as it is essentially a gift, or at the very least, joint property subject to divorce adjudication like anything else.
So why not buy something practical and expensive? Like a house or a car?
For cars, I suppose my hypothesis would say cars likely to depreciate very quickly (such as high-end SUV) are more suitable as engagement gifts than practical (prius or such), which fits roughly with my observations in real world
>the high cost and useless-ness of the gift are a feature not a bug
The other thing is the marketing says diamonds are "forever," presumably like your love, but houses and cars require expensive maintenance and are easily damaged. Not good if you're buying something symbolic.
Not that I personally agree, far from it, we didn't make any jewelery purchases when we got married.
Definitely some symbolism there. Relationships (romantic and otherwise) are indeed more like houses and cars - innately valuable, easily damaged, and requiring regular maintenance - than diamonds.
Reminds me of these outrageously expensive dishes some places are selling, where they put gold on the food, and other expensive ingredients that don't fit, all for the sake of creating the most expensive burger/steak/pizza whatever.
The ice analogy is a bit faulty because no one is eating their diamonds and the impurities are technically advantageous (though most people want the shiny "perfect" diamond which are much easier to come about artificially).
Part of the significance of the gesture is the level of painful expense involved. So making the item much cheaper also cheapens the gesture.
Call it what it is: diamonds are a down payment from a man to a woman for access to sex. The higher the price, the higher the value he assigns to it.
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
If people would follow that simple rule, hellfires would die before they spread. Please don't contribute to spreading them by feeding them.
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
If people would follow that simple rule, hellfires would die before they spread. Please don't contribute to spreading them by feeding them. The replies do more damage than the originals, because they open the floodgates.
e.g. people will make a judgment on the 'realness' of your ring and it's validity as a status symbol, based if it's inflated value is perceived to be within budget, and if challenged you would have to stand ground by declaring it's cost.
Obviously this suggests that the status symbol hypothesis is kinda weak.
I wonder if synthetic diamonds that were organized into specifically limited editions would hold more value...
Diamond marketing exploits that to good effect -- most diamonds are marked and registered in a database that traces its unique history. Doing so makes it possible to value the history as unique, and also leads by example in investing in the value of that history (they make a big deal out of the tech used to confirm authenticity). Since the final purpose of the diamond is to demonstrate stored value rather than produce it, the target buyer is focused on whether others recognize the value, not whether it is justified.
On a personal level, I think the history of "real" diamonds is almost always horrific and a negative asset! I hope companies like Pandora can put marketing power into creating scarcity stories for synthetic diamonds.
Most engineering projects around cultural products change (not necessarily improve) the "registered in a database" process. Whereas most value comes from creating / enriching a "unique history."
It may make it possible, but I would dispute that many people really care all that much about the story. Sure, they care about 'real', but what that means is up for debate.
> the target buyer is focused on whether others recognize the value
Pretty solidly they don't, hence the abysmal second hand values! But you're not wrong - to split hairs I think it's whether others recognise how much was spent, which lots of people confuse with value :)
That being said, what I actually took away from that comment... was that the teacher in geology class was presenting effectively political argument as opposed to teaching. Explaining the process of fine, but given what you described — I bet no one changed their mind about synthetic vs real. Most knew what the “correct” answer was. I think everyone kinda knows about synthetic diamonds, they just don’t care. Same way plastic bottles are better for the environment, yet are still used widely.
I 100% disagree. The stigma around cubic zirconia and 'fake' jewelry is real and alive, and absolutely carries over to any kind of man-made gems. I also don't think most people have any idea at all about the issues in the gem trade. Source: My highly educated co-workers who were astounded to read about conditions in emerald mines after Elon Musk got popular.
CZ also has a lower refractive index and less dispersion than either diamonds or Moissanite.
The correct answer is: no.
The fact that the participants publicly shared their opinion, and then they would also publicly had to signal that they were wrong could simply be such a big psychological factor, that the topic at hand did not matter.
It would’ve been better to vote anonymously, or even better ask one class at the beginning and a different class at the end of the lecture, then share the statistics with both classes at the next lecture.
You heard "Do you want this man-made item that is functionally identical to a naturally occurring item".
The women heard "Do you want the jewelry that symbolises your love to be real or fake?"
Functionally, there is almost no difference in an item containing a diamond and an identical one containing worthless rock.
But, you know, jewelry derives almost all of its value from being expensive and rare. Jewelry that is neither expensive nor rare stops being jewelry.
Costume jewelry is usually neither expensive nor rare, and yet it remains popular with certain demographics.
An engagement ring is emphatically not costume jewelry, and if you don't understand that "real jewelry" is an important sense the antonym of "costume jewelry", well, now you do.
Okay, let me clarify: Jewelry that is neither expensive nor rare stops being jewelry, it becomes costume jewelry.
traditionally it was an important gesture that the man was investing a large sum of money into his soon to be wife
Of course, people often sell their rings if they get divorced... but wouldn't that make actually an expensive ring an incentive to separate? The whole gesture makes very little sense.
Of course, times are very different now, and it is quite an antiquated idea.
Rings I get. They are a symbol of commitment, a sentimental memento, and just a nice accessory. But the idea that the cost to purchase the ring is somehow a reflection of that is still silly to me.
Why? Because natural ones are more expensive. It's literally like asking someone whether they prefer to have $20 or $40.
Obviously I would want a more expensive thing than a less expensive thing from a partner. If we split up, I could sell the more expensive thing for... more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKwL5G5HbGA
I think it takes a lot more than logic to convince most people to change opinions - especially on matters of preference or taste.
She described what she wanted exactly– nothing gaudy or ostentatious, just a singular, tasteful stone on a plain band. Couldn't be simpler, could it?
Finding stones that met her criteria was easy. Some were natural diamonds, some lab grown, many moissanite. From the outset, she said the meaning of the ring was what was most important and that she didn't want to pick it out herself (after effectively picking it out herself). We'd talked about moissanite a lot over the years, and she'd approved of the idea, and the same with lab grown diamonds. We're college educated adults with backgrounds in the sciences, so we weren't on uneven footing with comprehension.
When I showed her what I'd picked out, it quickly devolved into a lot of uncharacteristic tears and shouting. It took a few more tries, and then she explained. Apparently a lab grown diamond meant my love for her was also artificial, a budgeted ersatz stand-in for the real thing, and me saying we could spend more on a larger stone or matching set further belied my ignorance. No, she wanted me to have picked out an allegory for our love: a "perfect" diamond. She then sent me the details of the stone she actually wanted.
After a little "wait, where's this coming from and why did you let me spend weeks searching if there was only one right answer", I ended up spending twice our decided budget on a "natural" diamond with the same characteristics as the lab grown (except the diamond's clarity was lower, because lab grown clarity is always perfect), which wasn't any object, but now the ring is marred by the memories of arguments, and she doesn't really love it. Lesson learned.
I don't know what kind of spell the diamond people cast on otherwise reasonable women to make them able to reduce the totality of a life and experiences shared together into a single crystalline bet, but they need to package it and sell it to the military.
I don't think there's any glaring issue with either party above, but it's like you expect all women in your life to be like many people on HN — hyper-rational, utilitarian devs who would never want a mined diamond because a cheaper artificial one with better clarity exists. It's not wrong, but it's not right - there is no right answer here. Traditional ideas of romance are a powerful force.
After rationally agreeing not to get anything (because we were about to move overseas on a couple of luggages and didn't want extra stuff) my SO got me 3 (3!! usually it was one per event) gifts and I was empty handed.
And I had to resell / returns some of the items as we were moving anyway and we could just buy better quality stuff later on, without having to pay for the move.
Never thought of that. I'd imagine the ensuing conversation is even more problematic though? "What do you mean you don't have a birthday? That makes no sense!"
Maybe could also tack on that you count winters to tell your age.
I mean, if I have to put it on a form, that's one thing, but like office people don't need to know when it is.
I'd be much more disappointed in some useless trinket I don't need and would feel obligated to keep.
It's also a weird interpretation. My response would have been something like "moissanite has better visual properties, is free of all slave/conflict concerns, and saves us money for the honeymoon, so our love shines brighter, is built on a pure foundation, and will give us experiences we'll never forget".
More over it's extremely materialistic. Someone who loves you is pledging their life to you. Assuming the ring in question is fundamentally tasteful, is it too much to ask to focus on the life pledge instead of the $$ value of the symbol?
But I guess I lucked out. My wife rarely takes off her vintage ring with syntehtic rubies and a couple of tiny real accent diamonds on yellow gold (because that's what it came with). I knew her aesthetic tastes and got her something that matched those tastes, and it's unique enough that it stands out amongst her sisters/friends. And it certainly wasn't two months' salary, which she well knows. We didn't have that amount in savings at the time.
On the note of carnations for Valentine's Day, I'd view it in much the same way. Unless she's told you how much she adores and prefers carnations on Valentine's Day, roses are the best bet.
My partner and past partners have always fit that type, and I don't think either is lucky or better or right. I personally enjoy the tradition and the unspoken symbolism in the gifts, and striving to make her happy without it being spelled out for me.
I'm happy you have someone who makes you feel lucky, and who matches your preferences for communication and a relationship — finding that is possibly the greatest feeling in life. I simply aim to point out that either are valid, normal preferences and dynamics, as opposed to one being gaslighting.
Um, she did say with regards to the gem, that's the confusing part.
If you ever want to chat about something though, feel free to reach me at the email in my profile. Always great to meet new people, especially in these times. :)
They didn't make it up, they just made a display of wealth (and therefore social status) associated with their product. Brands do that all the time but the signal has always existed.
The advertising serves to put the association between the product and wealth into the common knowledge - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_knowledge_(logic). Or in other words, everybody knows that everybody knows that rings are expensive.
> Social signals that cost significant resources for something worthless are stupid.
No, you just don't understand social signals, which was my point. The "costing significant resources" part is the whole idea. Wedding rings and fresh kicks aren't expensive because they're valuable, they're valuable because they're expensive. If you want to understand the idea, check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory#Honest_signa.... It makes perfect sense (ie, it's rational).
It's equivalent to saying, "I am willing to burn all of this valuable money to prove that I value you".
If we only bought things that were of purely-material value, we'd stop at food, weather-protective but un-aesthetic clothing, and basic shelter. Everything beyond those is social (or hyperreal).
> No, you just don't understand social signals, which was my point.
I don't think OP denies the utility of signaling, only that as an intelligent human being, one must not feel absolutely helpless in accepting and perpetuating all instances of signaling that their peers do.
There are many different cultures with strong means of signaling one's devotion to a partner, without having to essentially burn a small fortune to enrich an exploitative industry. It doesn't even have to be non-materialistic. Many cultures have the gold ring/necklace. It's a signal of a fortune spent, and a retained safety net because gold is tradable.
If you want to get a ring for your significant other, the whole point is to buy something unnecessary as a symbol of the organic constance of your love. Nobody needs a diamond ring. If you tell a woman that her diamond came from a lab, you should accompany that fact with a better narrative than "this was the most economical rock available within your preference constraints."
She wants to love her ring, so give her a reason. Tell her that you wanted to buy her something big without feeling like it was an extravagant use of your shared nest egg. Explain why gem clarity is so important to you, because your vision of the future as a couple is unmarred by doubt. Talk about how lab-grown gems are a more ethical trade and symbolize a desire to avoid unnecessary conflict in your relationship. Remind her that even a diamond is not forever, so if she wants another ring next year you'd be happy to propose again with a superior gem.
I'm not understanding this. What other way to take this is there? "I'm no expert, but" is indicating that -- oh, I think I see what you mean by the non-literal meaning, maybe.
The literal meaning would be a disclaimer as to how much others should take one's perspective into account / how much others should trust/believe what one is saying,
whereas the non-literal meaning would be indicating that the situation is kind of sarcastic or something, either because one is well versed in the topic, and therefore should be considered credible, or because the thing being said is obvious and usually shouldn't even need to be said.
Is that right? Is this the distinction you meant?
edit : I'm sure I'm kind of serving as an example of your point by saying this, but, whatever, I don't regard that as a problem.
I don't think I've ever met anybody in real life that interacted the way HNers do. I always assumed it was a social affect where everybody pretends to be a robot because that's the culture of the site, in the same way people form pun chains on reddit. Is this an American thing, or maybe just a software engineer thing? I mean, I work in the software industry as a developer (granted, in the UK) so I figured I would've run into it by now if it were industry specific.
Well, I believe I've seen experts saying that they aren't an expect in the particular sub-topic in question, even if they are an expert in (another sub-topic of) the same general topic. Like, saying that there are people with more expertise than them in the specific sub-topic at hand. And maybe they might phrase this as "I'm not an expert" without specifying the specific subtopic, before commenting on a question of the specific sub-topic. This doesn't strike me as figurative though. Perhaps I've just been misinterpreting though, and they mean "I'm not an expert" figuratively, rather than literally meaning "I'm not an expert in this specific sub-topic"?
I think the "everyone pretends to be a robot" is, partially a software engineer thing? (Or, rather, correlated with the sort of person who would enjoy programming-ish stuff. ) Not literally pretending to be a robot. Rather, a combination of naturally acting in a certain way that could be described as analogous in some ways to a robot, and an imitation (and sometimes exaggeration) of behaviors which one has seen in oneself and in others who one kinda "identifies with", or aspiring towards an ideal or idea which has been constructed around those kinda of behaviors (possibly with this idea including things that aren't really naturally part of the behaviors, but by accidents of chance and misunderstanding, became part of a cultural idea ).
I've previously told someone that I don't really ever "feel like a robot", but I do often "feel like the sort of person who would sometimes 'feel like a robot' " .
> Yeah, I agree. I'd go even further and say that although the tech conversations on HN are substantive, the vast majority of non-tech conversations are devoid of social awareness
Social signaling and status symbols come up frequently on HN, and in this thread no less. Truly, in ordinary circles these concepts don’t come up and people aren’t even aware that what they’re doing is a concept that’s studied.
These social signals are a core human survival mechanisms since at least the birth of agriculture. When the climate turned for the worse or food was scarce, nomadic tribes just migrated to an environment with better conditions. In an agricultural society, clans had to develop a different mechanism that took advantage of agriculture's strength: large surpluses around harvest time that couldn't easily be stored through the winter. This is where the concept of banquets was born and there's archaeological evidence of hunter-gatherers and farmers participating in them together in the Early Neolithic, when agriculture just getting started.
Instead of moving to find food, humans adapted to create strong social bonds between clans by elaborate social signals. Banquets, parties, and feasts were fundamentally saying "we've got a surplus now and we'll share it with you with the understanding that you'll share your surplus when you have one." Dowries and marriages were just a formalization of that unspoken social contract. Today someone might throw a big wedding or party as a show of status but back then, they were grand events because all of the best food spoiled quickly and it served zero purpose to hoard it.
That said, what the diamond ring industry has evolved into is something quite new.
Good post which I don't mean to detract from, but this is certainly not true.
Even before sapiens, erectus and neanderthalensis were big game hunters. Sapiens in particular developed the tools for mass killings of migratory herds of large animals, and the ability to set fish traps for harvesting spawning runs.
Both of these left early hunter gatherers with abundant surpluses of meat at certain times of year, so much that preservation was the limiting factor in getting those calories into bodies. We know the response of the Tlingit people to this bounty from very recent history: they would throw huge banquets called potlatches.
I just tire of the subterfuge.
shudders
It reminds me of the scene in Lord of War about the atrocity of a “used gun”.
The right “used” diamonds are often received better than fresh natural diamonds by recipients. But that depends a lot on the “origin story”.
We went through over a dozen jewelry stores, each of them pushing mined diamonds so hard that it angered us. The eventual solution wasn't even that we found an amenable jewelry store. We ended up obtaining a ring via a private transfer from a family member. While the ring contains a mined diamond, it has quite a bit of sentimental value and didn't really put price pressure on the public market. It was a good solution for us, but obviously not scalable!
If I said it once, I have said it a million times, if your SO insists on a diamond from the ground as opposed to a lab, say fine, but I am getting my shots flying to Africa and will mine it myself. It won't matter if you bring back a opaque brown rock, with 0 marketing your SO would wear it with pride and most others would be jealous when they hear the story behind it.
It goes hand in hand with your obtaining a stone from family and the sentiment of it. My Mom has 5 boys and my Dad gave her a ring with 5 diamonds, and she has made 1 available to each of us for an engagement ring, which she would replace with the birthstone of each son. As you say its not scalable, and no one ever marketed the idea, but the sentiment is extremely powerful.
That's a great idea, but I don't know of any place you could do that in real life. Diamonds can be very valuable depending on size, color, clarity etc. Diamond mines have heavy security around their miners to ensure a tiny little diamond doesn't go missing.
There is zero chance they'd let a tourist in.
Someone I know smuggled a diamond purchased in South Africa for their spouse and the diamond and story behind that were both well appreciated.
You might be surprised of the acceptance of an outsider showing a willingness to roll up their sleeves and experience something real not just sip drinks on a beach resort, even if it is for a day or two. Similarly if you met a child laborer or former child soldier outside those conditions, odds are you would have no idea of their personal experience.
I have met many child refugees that have more Worldly experience than most adults, yet if I did not represent them in asylum proceedings and meet them while they were detained, they would have simply appeared as children in my eyes. I have been part of law clinics that represented torture victims from some of the regimes you have in mind. The child soldiers, much less the child laborers, are not mercing people for their cell phones.
If you are a reader, I might suggest two books: 1) The Evolution of Deadly Conflict in Liberia; and 2) Storming the Court.
Again, IMHO, one of the biggest problems in life is solving the problem of being alone, and for nearly everyone the best solution is a really good marriage.
Here is a secret scorecard:
You give knowledge of yourselves to each other, that is, keep your spouse well informed on your thoughts and feelings.
You really care about each other.
You respect and respond to each other.
Neither of you tries to manipulate, fool, or exploit your spouse.
You can trust each other.
IMHO, it is good to do well on this scorecard.
Agreed, but I was OK with spending the money, what really bothers me is how worthless diamonds are. Metals have a relatively free market, many uses, and are fungible, so the pricing is more in line with reality.
The knot was then packaged inside of a chest, as a reminder of the promise they made on their Wedding Day. And as far as I know, they still have that chest with them, and the Knot is still tied.
Why then a ring [with a diamond] at all? It's nothing special at all, just what everyone does. Almost the definition of replaceability and arbitrariness. There is no connection between the relationship and a random ring with a stone you buy at some random jewelry store. Why not something individual, specific to the relationship? Every $1 toy ring used as a wedding ring is more personal and telling than any thousands of dollars ring with a diamond.
The militaries of the world invented it, it's business that bought it. Much of this diamond/marriage symbolism stems back to the late 1940s post WWII with DaBeer's engagement ring ad campaigns.
WWII involved a lot of R&D in psyops and effects of propoganda. Sure, these strategies always existed but it became part of scientific research, was refined and weaponized to manipulate perceptions of people using non-kinetic approaches to try and avoid or minimize kinetic warfare. After the war in the mid 40s ended, where do you think all that expertise in propoganda from military went? Business marketing and advertising sprouted from much of this expertise. Marketing and advertising always existed before then but there was a dramatic shift in how things were sold creating armies of refined snake oil salesmen.
In the late 40s, DaBeers ran a massive ad campaign employing such propoganda that shifted culture into associating diamond rings with marriage. There had been dowries and other exchanges of wealth and power in marriages before (it's often been a basis for marriage) that but DaBeers managed to shift that in culture in the west to the diamond ring. It's now so deeply ingrained in culture and people's perceptions that it can make otherwise rational people irrational.
Do not ever underestimate the power of propoganda in its various forms. Pyschogical manipulation runs rampant in business marketing and these are the effects. We've culturally accepted it for a variety of reasons. I question if we should continue to accept these practices in business.
If I buy a 3-month salary worth diamond I'm probably not gone leave you after a month.
Its an easily portable high value item that also serves as signaling for the person wearing it. It makes more sense then livestock in the modern world.
Marketing had something to do with it, but its more complex then that.
Jewelry is not a great value store, unless you're fine with selling it at a significant loss. Diamonds specially, unless they're rare, seem to magically lose a lot of its value as soon as they print your receipt.
To be honest, I find the whole love-engagement-sex-wedding handling retrograde and inappropriate for the current times.
Neither is a car, but they're both still very strong signals of wealth (specifically, that you could afford to burn the money).
However, if you want jewelry as a value store, you deal in gold and silver (mainly that it can be melted down)
And displaying the wealth that is mobile is also an important signal.
Pure economics would suggest a small gold bar would make more sense if you want to signal commitment.
> To be honest, I find the whole love-engagement-sex-wedding handling retrograde and inappropriate for the current times.
Me to but that is not the discussion.
For the overview: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/04/the-str...
The original research paper: Margaret F. Brinig, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization Vol. 6, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 203-215 (13 pages), https://www.jstor.org/stable/764797
Wikipedia page on Breach of Promise to Marry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_promise
In any case, the spell doesn't work on everyone.
If this is what the other person expects out of a relationship it's time to jump ship ASAP.
There's nothing wrong with wanting a 'natural' diamond. But to mislead your partner as part of some sick test, and then make them feel like dirt for not having passed?
Women do this all the time. I agree it’s not a good behavior.
For humans, it's, "I have excess resources I can afford to burn according to the socially-accepted ritual or test, so when you bear my offspring, you can be sure I will also have excess capacity to provide for both you and your offspring."
A female may have second thoughts about choosing you as a mate if you appear to cheat at the test or don't do the test right.
I think the comments attacking your partner may be assuming that this "uncharacteristic tears and shouting" was some sort of irrational hysteria rather than the boiling-over of simmering problems.
Maybe I'm the one reading too far into it though.
Edit: As I said in another reply, there's nothing illogical about it. If value is placed culturally and socially on natural diamonds, then they are valuable, regardless of if that value is "artificially" created via advertising of whatever. Lots of stuff is quite stupid if you look at it objectively, out of context. Doesn't mean it isn't true in context.
EDIT: Just did a ctrl-f for NFT and I guess I wasn't the first to say that, although those comments are much lower on the page.
And thus, when somebody "irrationally" buys a "worthless" ring for a hefty amount, it signals to some extent that one is serious, committed and financially capable of the proposed marriage.
It's often not that the partner wants the expensive thing, but more that they want a proof that the marriage is worth more than that expensive and useless thing, which they want precisely because it's useless objectively and the purchase is "irrational".
It's basically a trolley problem of "do I value my partner more, or my hard earned $XXXX more?" The forced irrational choice makes the game rational on a meta level. I don't disagree that the game kind of sucks, and there are other ways to build trust and understanding regarding the level of commitment between partners, but I consider the ring thing to be the "easy" way to do it. (which is why it's de-facto standard in many cultures)
I think the hatred against capitalism and marketing is slightly off the mark here, since capitalism is merely supplying these expensive things to satisfy the somewhat "biological" demand in our mating rituals. Capitalists might be unscrupulous, but somebody had to do it.
(Disclaimer in case it matters - I'm male, happily married to my wife, and bought a non-diamond ring as an engagement ring. I don't think this necessarily applies to any gender in any specific case, but generally speaking so far as humans are animals, the biological aspect dominates)
Humans are rational animals. Yes, obviously we have natural inclinations (they aren't irrational, btw; they have a purpose and only when the inclination is disordered, deficient, excessive, or we behave in ways opposed to the good when moved by the inclination can we speak of irrationality). However, we can make errors in judgement when interpreting signs and relating these signs to our inclinations. Marketing is often actively engaged in confusing people when it comes to what things mean. And when we get the meanings of signs wrong, we relate things erroneously to our natural inclinations. So this very recent practice of buying extravagant diamond rings beyond our means is the product of psychological manipulation and deceit that exploits vice and inclination by effectively lying about what an overpriced diamond ring signals.
It would be an error to assume that a woman from a culture that values thrift would react positively to such a gift, much less demand it. She might be left thinking that the man is financially irresponsible. Most cultures do not make spending obscene amounts of money on a ring a common practice. The engagement ring has historically been a symbolic gesture, not a demonstration of irresponsibility, immodesty, profligacy, and vanity.
In the case of peacocks, they ARE their plumage. Their plumage is not a sign of seriousness, but a sign of fitness and health and shaped by inherent traits and female selection (her interpretation or recognition that the better the plumage, the better the health), not male initiative. The peacock also isn't willing his plumage.
You can just as easily construe the ring as a test of your potential wife's character. If she refuses to marry you because you haven't spent a fourth or more of your salary on a ring, then good riddance. Who wants to be saddled with a fraudulent, vain, and vapid creature like that. She would make a terrible mother.
These days people get married with somebody they met on Tinder for a month because "true love". The weight of a promise from a person you met for a couple weeks and from a family you've known for decades is different, which accounts for the modern inventions you despise as compensation.
I mean, I'm not saying this expensive ring thing is a desirable game to play, and I don't disagree that there are vain people out there, but the ring serves a particular purpose in the mating game of modern society, not just to satisfy some people's vanity.
(btw, if you think about it, an engagement ring isn't inherently that great for showing off. Most people put it away in a little box and wear a less conspicuous ring anyway.)
I'm wondering how, if you picked it out, she even knew the diamond was lab grown? Did she start grilling you immediately? Or did she get the microscope out? Maybe I'm a total moron but I can't tell the difference by just looking at it.
It's all about status signaling. The whole concept of the ring is a literal status symbol, signaling you're off the market. We can get upset about this particular status signal all we want, but it's not as if it's any less moral than any other status signal we participate in. That new phone was made by slaves. The car was built by raw materials mined in awful ways, possibly with slave labor. We can't go down this rabbit hole with everything in our life. I recommend making small nudges when we can in our own lives, but try not to get too worked up over any of them, it's not good for your mental health.
Both times I got engaged (only got married once, though), I brought my partner to the jewellery store to pick out rings we both liked, as it would be something we'd be wearing for a non-determined time and I'd say that being happy with that trumps the whole "propose with a ring out of nowhere in public".
I do not think you would have had a better experience if you did not include her.
There is a right answer. She absolutely will not tell it to you.
If you guess wrong that means you don’t love her.
If we can grow a perfect diamond, of seemingly any size, then finding a large, clear natural diamond is more special than buying a manufactured diamond. Then there’s the time involved, The natural process taking much more time. It’s hard for me to see why people think they are equivalent. Approaching an emotional subject with a logical mind won’t work. Yes they are the same but really they’re not.
It's not surprising that the 30 minute lecture didn't sway too many minds -- I think the professor didn't 'get it' in his/her own way. People aren't just buying collections of atoms (though they actually are).
Even if the person displaying a luxury artifact agrees that some other artifact is equivalent, if the people they're displaying it to don't also agree, then there is a difference that's relevant to the purpose of the artifact, which is to advertise your wealth.
Though the topic at hand is diamonds, which are strongly associated with wedding proposals, this principle applies equally to sports cars, guitars, etc.
What some intrepid manufacturer should do is create custom diamonds that are actually more expensive than natural diamonds, with some subtle structure that cannot be found in nature. That solves the problem of immoral sourcing, and better suits the purpose of displaying wealth.
Here's another interesting twist that further shows how powerful branding and marketing really are: Spence Diamonds is a diamond retailer in Canada that advertises extremely aggressively via radio ads. A few years ago, it started a huge campaign for lab grown diamonds, portraying them with adjectives such as "artisan-made" (going as far as comparing them to Michelangelo art). And what do you know:
> While still offering mined diamonds, Spence has found that when its customers are given a choice, 80% of them choose lab-growns over mined diamonds[0]
[0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/pamdanziger/2019/05/12/spence-d...
I was trying to explain to him that diamonds are worthless, they have little resale value because they're not fungible, the rarity is being manipulated, and man made diamonds are indistinguishable without a special tool.
His position was that he can't get his fiance a "fake diamond" and I said just because it's man made doesn't mean that it isn't real. We went back and forth a bit, and started to get heated, and eventually I said "If I make a sandwich it doesn't mean it's not a real sandwich!" which made our other co-workers laugh hysterically and repeat for years. Ice would have made the point much better than a sandwich, but I suspect I wouldn't remember the story.
Getting a lab grown diamond or an alternative stone for your girlfriend can feel like you chose saving money or your personal views on diamond ethics over getting her something that meets those table stakes. It doesn't matter if it's technically superior (I rarely hear people discuss the quality of their diamonds anyway, beyond weight occasionally). What does matter is that you chose to give her something different than the standard, and the ring will always feel like it has a little asterisk on it marking this.
No, that's not it.
Diamonds are conspicuous status signaling. It's a very human, even animal drive. DeBeers gets a lot of hate, and much of it deservedly so, but they tapped into and exploited our nature - they didn't create it.
People don't often change their minds right away. Specifically, there is a huge amount of neural reconfiguration which happens when we sleep, which is why we "sleep on it".
The interesting question, which is impossible to answer, is how those women felt about lab-grown diamonds by the time it was important. I'd guess that nearly all of them became more open to the idea, and that more changed their minds later than had revised their opinion immediately after the lecture.
Go to gem and mineral shows for jewelry.
They are very close to wholesale prices and as such can be up to 10x less expensive than a store, and cash purchases typically even less.
Jewelry diamonds at such event aren't the main item that people are there for though. It's the truly rare items that you find. Things like non-standard colored sapphires, gargantuan amethysts, gem rhodochrosite, fossils of dubious pedigree, meteorites, fordite, etc. Working diamonds, ones that are perfectly made and the size of your palm, can be bought and then cut down for relatively cheap. Many research labs and universities get samples at these events in 'legal' deals.
Especially near the end of the shows when vendors need to make a sale, things get pretty wild as the liquor comes out as well as the cash.
Check your local listings, ads, and billboards. It's a great Saturday activity even for the nephews and nieces.
Hopefully the process is more environmentally friendly too.
They are real diamonds.
I find it hi-goddamned-larious that the moment these became viable, the industry switched from "Diamond purity is the be-all and end-all and you must have the clearest, most pure" to "Oh, well of course it's all about having the right impurities to increase sparkle and character, lab-grown diamonds don't have character"
Just like with sapphires, if we're not there already I'm sure it won't be long before exactly the right type and number of impurities or faults can be introduced to mimic any natural diamond.
So losers are the poor folks digging in the ground and winners are the companies who've just built themselves a lab.
Maybe a way out of this, would be price up the grown diamonds to include a charitable donation to help create alternate employment for the miners. Would be quite nice to have that representation included in the shiny thing on a finger.
Spoken like someone who thinks that mining is conducted by volunteers.
Most of the world's diamonds are coming out of open-cast mines and most of those are in Russia.
Should I feel sad we no longer send kids up chimneys to sweep them?
I agree that social programs are needed to help these folks, but I think even without them, undermining this industry is a win.
I'm responsible for many unemployed miners as I've never bought a diamond. Also you're responsible for unemployment in smiths by not buying horsehoes.
See how similar that sound to what you are saying?
All of these things can actually result in a cool guitar sound in the right proportions. Hard rock in particular has strongly distorted sounds created by tube amps (for the most part). But even sounds which we think of as cleaner have a significant amount of tube distortion (e.g. the intro to Sweet Home Alabama, or the main riff of Day Tripper). If you put an electric guitar into a regular amplifier, in general, it sounds flat and terrible.
Having said that, I think given the other pretty grievous activities associated with the diamond trade, this is probably a good move. They’re not called blood diamonds for nothing.
Here's another take - able bodied workers are less likely to be sucked into an industry which digs up shiny rocks to send overseas, and may be able to take up something of more benefit to the local economy.
As long as mined diamonds are profitable there is a strong incentive for criminal interests to hinder any attempts to improve the lot of the local inhabitants so they have a continued supply of very cheap labour. If you make diamond mining unprofitable then the criminal elements move on to other more profitable enterprises. This leaves the local populace free from interference, and efforts by aid agencies to improve their lot may have a better chance of succeeding.
If your business is to force people into slavery, then it is part of your business to remove other avenues for them to get out of slavery.
I suspect your sentence got a little mangled. It sounds like you're saying that businesses should try to prevent people from getting out of slavery by removing other avenues by which they could free themselves.
I suspect you mean that they should create those avenues for freedom, instead.
They are saying slavery based businesses should... If you profit off slavery you don't want it to end.
Oh my good grief. What on earth did you think I was advocating?
The best option available to a person in the short term is not necessarily the best option for a society in the long term. In this case, it almost certainly isn't. Compare "resource curse" [1].
Couldn't you say that about any and all technological advances?
Diamonds are just another means of gaining power and wealth. They're only a problem in societies that don't have the mechanisms for dealing with inevitable power and wealth disparities.
Yes. A basic income for which one doesn't need to go into the diamond mines, for example.
I guess rarity is hard to set a price on. And people like being rare and unique.
I agree that some people value rarity and uniqueness, but it doesn't look to me like diamonds (natural or otherwise) provide that.
But yes, as I said above, there is value to some people in the rarity and uniqueness of that original, even if you could pump out something that is to all intents and purposes identical.
But diamonds aren't all that rare, the market is managed to restrict supply, even with that everyone and their grandmother has one on their finger. And few people (other than geologists I guess) are really bothered about the back story here. They have an idea about what's "real", and what's not, but that can change.
(I also think where we're just talking about lumps of a material, it's slightly different to a manufactured object, perhaps)
Grown diamonds are too perfect, and it’s trivially easy to tell the difference. You don’t need a loupe at all.
I don’t own any diamonds, but I like rocks and minerals. Hank from breaking bad would be proud.
All of which can either be recreated in a lab now, or are likely to be possible before long. See for example synthetic star sapphires.
> I like rocks and minerals
Good for you, so does my step-dad (he's a geologist). The man was a nightmare to try and drag around the New York museum of natural history, I thought we'd never get out of the mineral section...
We need to start thinking about jewelry like hi-fi audio. If you just want to listen to good music then lord knows you don't need a $10k setup. You hit diminishing returns really fast and your untrained eye isn't gonna be able to tell the difference between a $500, $2,000, and $10,000 diamond -- they will all be pretty. But that doesn't mean that there aren't people who do notice and do care.
And even more people who only notice when they're told.
The only thing rare about this big sale is that it’s sealed in the box in perfect condition. All that extra money just for packaging material. Collectors are truly weird.
It's so strange. Buying boxed items with no intention to (ever?) unbox essentially amounts to just paying for the box itself, rather than the contents.
It's amazing how powerful the marketing narrative must be for something extremely normie and prescribed to be viewed instead as "rare and unique".
A quick search of the internet turns up various articles about inclusions in diamonds deliberately introduced to control the properties of the resulting material. So if we're not there yet with synthetic jewellery diamonds, we will be.
The sapphire market is interesting in some ways, 'natural' sapphires still fetch a few hundred dollars per carat. It genuinely fascinates me that someone would pay (as an example I just found) over £7000 for a ring with a 4.98 carat "natural" bi-colour sapphire set with six small 0.1 carat diamonds, when you can get a synthetic stone chemically and physically the same for around £12.
Of the many shocking moments, one that stood out to me was the way they went after post-war Japan to convert their "backwards" desires to ones of a more "forward-thinking" diamond friendly impulse:
"J. Walter Thompson began its campaign by suggesting that diamonds were a visible sign of modern Western values. It created a series of color advertisements in Japanese magazines showing beautiful women displaying their diamond rings. All the women had Western facial features and wore European clothes. Moreover, the women in most of the advertisements were involved in some activity -- such as bicycling, camping, yachting, ocean swimming, or mountain climbing -- that defied Japanese traditions. In the background, there usually stood a Japanese man, also attired in fashionable European clothes. In addition, almost all of the automobiles, sporting equipment, and other artifacts in the picture were conspicuous foreign imports. The message was clear: diamonds represent a sharp break with the Oriental past and a sign of entry into modern life."
"The campaign was remarkably successful. Until 1959, the importation of diamonds had not even been permitted by the postwar Japanese government. When the campaign began, in 1967, not quite 5 percent of engaged Japanese women received a diamond engagement ring. By 1972, the proportion had risen to 27 percent. By 1978, half of all Japanese women who were married wore a diamond; by 1981, some 60 percent of Japanese brides wore diamonds. In a mere fourteen years, the 1,500-year Japanese tradition had been radically revised. Diamonds became a staple of the Japanese marriage. Japan became the second largest market, after the United States, for the sale of diamond engagement rings."
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo...
Anyone care to share their own favorite articles?
I am a huge fan of William Langewiesche's work (some of which, incidentally, has been for The Atlantic). He writes crisp, longform articles on a variety of topics, including but not limited to aviation [1], shipping [2], nuclear proliferation [3], the dark net [4], and private military contractors [5].
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/mh370-m...
[2] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/04/inside-el-faro-the-w...
[3] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2006/12/how-to-...
[4] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/09/welcome-to-the-dark-...
[5] https://www.vanityfair.com/news/business/2014/04/g4s-global-...
https://reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8pb8d5/i_grow_diamonds_i_...
Sounds like a business ready to be disrupted
Edit: Found the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/15/fashion/jewelry-diamond-s...
Even in the article you listed there were a number of offers all close to each other. ~8-10k is a 'reasonable price' for that ring.
Most jewelers I've interacted with are more than happy to buy your diamond for a bit under wholesale cost. They're also happy to make rings with old diamonds. They make money selling settings too.
One issue is the public. There are a number of people who don't want a "Used Ring". But, there are a large number of diamonds being sold that have been owned previously.
Here's the profit margins that the stones receive along the way: - Miners selling to cutters - 10-15% profit - Cutters selling to wholesalers - 3-5% profit - Wholesalers selling to retail - 10-20% profit - Retail to consumers - 100-200% profit
Everyone on these threads is always mad at the miners and I never see any anger placed on the Jared's, Kay's, Zale's of the world (all owned by the same company btw).
You and the other person gives loads of reasons why people giving that complaint are entirely right. The marketing is (partly) that it is valuable. In practice you'll not be able to resell it for a similar value.
Kind of crazy when people say they want a "new" diamond, uh....well all of them are literally millions of years old unless it's lab grown.
Can anyone who works in the diamond industry respond to this? Can anyone tell if a diamond has been made into a ring before? Would it damage the diamond to remove it from the ring? This sounds like an opportunity to plaster signs that say "WE BUY DIAMOND RINGS" all over and buy them back from consumers at a discount from wholesale.
The easiest way is to determine through the setting. Styles change. If it's a setting from the 50s that isn't made anymore it's probably old. If it's a setting from a company that is < 10 years old it's got a better chance of being new.
Diamonds are not damaged when swapping settings. They are often removed and reset if a prong breaks for instance.
Most people just don't want to buy from estate sales or auction. So, jewelry stores will do that, clean it up, put it in a new setting (or leave it as is), and resell it as 'new'.
I bought my wife's diamond out of an ugly ring I found at a pawn shop. I brought it to a jeweler at a mall and had him pop it in one of his bands.
I saved a TON of money, my wife got a modern design with a really high quality stone, and the jeweler still got some business and his ring on another finger.
Win/Win
Jun 7 2018: 124.79 (day of Reddit comment)
May 4 2021: 124.27 (today)
The reddit comment ignores obvious macroeconomic trends. Growth of middle class in China and India are adding to the diamond demand (a lot), in addition to general global population growth and greater purchasing power.
A friend got proposed a couple of months ago and her ring is ~40k USD. In my opinion, that's crazy since they're spending ~30k CAD on their wedding.
My partner also mentioned that she'd like a wedding ring of the same calibre since according to her - diamond ring is how much love / value / worth I hold for her. Furthermore, a significant group of middle/upper-middle class want naturally occurring diamonds (because they're "real") over lab produced ones (not because of the quality, but because of the tag associated with and the societal group pressure). Furthermore, the same group also hate moissanite because it's not diamond.
It's irrational, marketing and conditioning all they way down.
Hopefully, stuff like this forces lab grown diamonds to the mainstream culture so that we can finally get rid of that mentality.
One big warning sign right there.
FYI I didn't give my wife any diamond, in fact when I proposed to her on top of Mont Blanc after grueling dangerous skitour I didn't even have a ring since she never wore any before, so I couldn't get correct size.
It didn't matter a bit and still doesn't - everybody we talked about considers my proposal way cooler than usual big money being thrown around. I bought her a ring of her choice afterwards (cheap stuff), and no surprise - she lost it / got stolen when working at tomography lab few months afterwards. Not a problem, imagine losing a ring worth 40k (upon sale, resale maybe 50% of it if lucky).
I, personally, decided I would not marry someone who thought this way. I know it is a weird hill to die on, but if someone won't change their mind even after seeing all of the pertinent information about the diamond mining industry and the marketing, then that is not the type of person I want to marry. I luckily found an amazing woman who thinks the same way I do.
Wow.. I find it hard to believe how someone can say/repeat such a statement about the size and authenticity of a shiny rock to equal the love you have for the person. It sounds so materialistic - but, I can't blame her either, it's part of the value system of the surrounding society she grew up in. It's impressive how effective the diamond industry's marketing has been over the last century or so.
I don't really understand situations where peoples' partners say things like this and it comes as a surprise. This feels like an extremely aggressive statement on how they view your relationship, and the level of trust and mutual understanding you have.
I just can't imagine getting to the point of considering marrying someone and not knowing well in advance that they will hold an opinion like this. And if they seemed like the kind of person who would have this opinion... I probably wouldn't be staying with them, because it seems like it would flag a variety of other uncomfortable personality traits.
How did you react? Was it a surprise to hear this?
> I probably wouldn't be staying with them, because it seems like it would flag a variety of other uncomfortable personality traits.
I wouldn't go that far - we all have hobbies/interests we are passionate about that we're not utilitarian about and are willing to go all-out on. Judging a person on one axis feels like a mistake to me.
> I wouldn't go that far - we all have hobbies/interests we are passionate about that we're not utilitarian about and are willing to go all-out on. Judging a person on one axis feels like a mistake to me.
I don't this is a hobby so much as a world view, or as you stated, an addiction. To me it indicates a very materialistic, shallow worldview. If 40k rings are required to show love, what do they think of people who aren't as wealthy? What would they think of you if you lost your job? Heck if someone's marrying you, why do you need to show your love at all, shouldn't that be established to them?
I think you should be incredibly judgy about who you choose to marry.
Or - hear me out - the partner was embarrassed to verbalize that she's competing with the friend's engagement ring, and therefore created a less embarrassing, post-hoc rationalization as to why she wants a $40k ring too. Here's a thought experiment - had the friend gotten a $6k ring, would she have asked for a ring closer to $6k or still gone with $40k, by some intuition?
> Heck if someone's marrying you, why do you need to show your love at all, shouldn't that be established to them?
Unfortunately, no (on both sides: some people marry for the wrong reasons, and it's not close to showing your love - which shouldn't be an event)
> I think you should be incredibly judgy about who you choose to marry.
Absolutely.
Marginally better, but still greatly concerning that the person you're supposed to trust most is too embarrassed to communicate openly imo.
Do not marry this person. At the very least, they're bad with money (presuming you/they are not a multimillionaire presently where $40k is just pocket money).
Almost no matter how financially well off you are, why have $40K on your finger. Not worth the danger (unless maybe you are $100m+, have 24/7 security, rich).
I did some looking around and learned about Moissanite. The women on r/moissanite were especially enthused about it. From there I learned that you could design and purchase Moissanite jewelry directly from China. I had my wife look through the rings of one of the stores on Alibaba and choose one that she liked, except the color was wrong (she wanted rose gold instead of platinum). So I reached out to the company and asked about the possibility of getting it made in rose gold. I was assured it was no problem. I told them I wanted solid rose gold and not plated. They said the price would be higher, but no problem. I sent my wife's ring size and a few days later they sent back CAD mockups of what the ring would look like with measurements. I had them enlarge the bottom of the band and we came to an agreement on what cut/color/clarity/etc. all of the side moissanite stones would be. Then we started working on the main stone. We came to an agreement on size (2 Carat), color, clarity, style, etc. We could specify everything about the stone from the height of the crown to the width of the edge to the way the stone was cut to the bottom point - frankly we had to read up a lot of how stones are cut and what the different options are to know how to appropriately respond. About a week later they had finished cutting the stone and sent us videos of it under different light conditions so that we could approve it. Then they manufactured the ring and sent us videos of it to approve. After approval and final payment we received it in the mail about 3 days later.
Frankly my wife loves the ring. It really is gorgeous and everyone thinks the Moissanite is a real diamond.
My favorite part is that the entire thing only cost me $700. 10 out of 10 I'd definitely do it that way again.
As in not having a ring is 'unacceptable' somehow then?
Of course you can ignore tradition but then why marry in the first place?
If someone told me they thought it was unacceptable that I didn't have a ring I'd laugh at them.
These faux-intellectual "I'm a robot, beep boop I don't understand context and I parse conversations like a compiler would, semantic error on line 5" conversations are probably the least productive on this website, and they're unfortunately very common. It's not smart, it's just obtuse.
Taxation, adoption, power of attorney, inheritance taxes, etc.
> There is no reason why laws should give special privileges to marriages over other forms of relationships.
I tend to agree, but that's a normative question and doesn't change the legal facts we have to deal with.
(At least not directly. Laws are made by people, and if enough people or the right people care for laws to be different, laws can be changed.)
I find it strange how many people seem to be able to separate a tradition from physical items traditionally involved in that tradition.
They're just symbols - I don't think it's strange that many people are able to separate them.
What's "acceptable" depends on the people in the relationship, and what will make each of them happy.
I didn't have a ring when I proposed to my partner as it was a fairly spontaneous decision when we were in a foreign country, and I knew the location of the proposal would matter much more to her than a ring.
But then after we got back we worked together with a jeweller to design a ring, which made sense as she has better design judgment than me, and we weren't doing anything very lavish/expensive, just something tasteful that she would love (for the record it didn't have diamonds, but rather a morganite stone with white gold).
Life is expensive, and between cars, house, the actual wedding, kids, etc. The money I spent on my wives engagement ring seems like child's play.
Also I feel like most women want it, because it's what everyone asks of them. 100% it's societal pressure. If you tell someone you got engaged, question #1 will be "Ohh let me see the ring!"
To me it feels more like a classic case of mimetism: all beautiful / successful / happy / rich people have a diamond ring, so most women naturally want one too. It's not really about fear, but more about a strong desire to have the same object as your role models.
I think there is an unofficial "pecking order" of society. People treat you differently if you roll up in a new Mercedes vs a new Honda. If your purse is a Louis Vuitton or a Walmart brand. They all functionally do the same thing, but society uses these things to lump people into camps.
In that same regard, I've seen women who are not materialistic seem embarrassed to show off their modest ring which is wrong. I think a lot of people treat engagement rings in the same way as designer bags, and nice cars.
We can say it doesn't matter, but if society ranks you differently I think it does matter on some level.
I wonder if your literal children would feel like that if you'd taken the same money for a ring that will (presuming you proceed with marriage) pretty much never get worn, and invested it in an index fund until their 21st birthday.
"child's play" indeed is what I would call this level of financial misplanning.
I don't know what culture you're from. But in North America engagement rings are worn as every day jewellery. So it gets used daily.
>I wonder if your literal children would feel like that if you'd taken the same money for a ring that will (presuming you proceed with marriage) pretty much never get worn, and invested it in an index fund until their 21st birthday.
I guess you're presuming that because I spent money on one thing... I'm unable to spend money on another thing? Do you apply the same logic to everything in your life? "I really should have gone with the cheapest clothing available as then I could have saved $x towards my children's future!"
Regardless my children do in fact have investment accounts opened in their names and invested in index funds, and I don't regret buying my wife a nice engagement ring, our our Audi, or our house, etc etc. I hope if you get married you don't put every expense through the view point of "If I invested this for 21 years!" as you'd never take a day of vacation, or enjoy yourself. :)
(He's giving it all to charity, though.)
"How dare you spend what at the end of the day is a trivial amount of money on something that your significant other appreciates and enjoys. You should be eating soylent green and living in a 400 square foot home!"
If I were struggling to get by, it would be a fair discussion. However the audience on HN I presume to be middle class, if not upper middle class it seems like an odd argument to make.
After the wedding?
Edit: As a random google you can get items like this which combine the wedding band with the engagement ring: https://www.kay.com/diamond-bridal-set-18-ct-tw-roundcut-10k...
Although you should bear in mind there is a correlation between the amount spent on getting married and the likelihood of divorce.
Feeling sorry for the people that go in a marriage with those kind of sentiments about their partner, or about relationships/marriage in general.
They allege their mined diamonds are "conflict free" https://www.jamesallen.com/education/diamonds/grading-confli....
However, my feeling is I don't trust this 100%, and for my SO having a "real diamond" meant a lot. For me, in this case, the need to get a "real diamond" for my SO trumped my ethical stance on where the diamond was sourced.
I think if you are going for 100% ethical purity, then you should either get no diamond (many other beautiful, precious gemstones if you still want one) or just go for it to make your SO happy.
It will be interesting to see if companies will try to market "real diamonds" and how the market will respond.
Separately, the work that goes into cutting/finishing diamonds is incredible and there is a huge amount of variety between individual diamonds. They are very fascinating things.
I think it's quite common knowledge that diamonds were traditionally mined before we were able to make them in a lab, and because of this it's seen as the default to which any other methods of making a diamond are compared.
I guess I'm splitting hairs, yes there is definitely a cultural hangup about mined diamonds being "real" and made diamonds being imitations, fake, whatever. I just don't think many people care that much about the actual backstory, they just want a 'real' one. As such I think the synthetic diamond industry has a bit of an uphill struggle on its hands, but not an unwinnable one if they can convince people that theirs are 'real' too.
And to my (very literalist in many respects) mind, they are.
(edit - I will add that I have gone out of my way to source lab-created stones and silver settings to make jewellery for my partner in the past, so far mostly using star-sapphires, and she seems to have loved them. I find the idea of lab-recreated gems pretty fascinating, and I think that enthusiasm helped.)
They've been doing this to try and undercut lab diamond growing company's in an attempt to retain control of the diamond market in an era where lab diamonds are becoming more and more popular as people consider their ethical choices.
I do not know who the “you” is here, but I would bet most people that want to consume diamonds (especially mined) as an end user for display purposes want to do so to signal their (potential) purchasing power, especially amongst their network.
Although, in this day and age, diamond and jewelry in general are pretty poor status signals. In general, material objects are a poorer show of status than simply having vacation pictures from all over the world constantly showing leisure time (the more finite and expensive commodity).
However, people always turn a blind eye to the part of the story that involves cruelty, which is largely down to De Beers excellent marketing and creation of artificial scarcity.
This might well be the most successful marketing campaign in history.
We did discuss the ethical concerns of earth vs lab diamonds beforehand, and the decision to go with an earth diamond was intentional.
The diamond was a yellow, cushion cut diamond. I agree, there are other gemstones that are often overlooked and have beautiful qualities.
Lab grown diamonds are real diamonds. There is a simple, easy, and cost-effective solution to the problem you seem to have skipped over here.
Although through an objective lens they are the same, for a lot of people there is an emotional difference between buying (or receiving) a lab grown vs earth grown diamond which means they can't be treated like-for-like in every situation.
Fortunately, almost no diamond-wearer has the ability to tell the difference, which alludes to the easy solution.
But you can't force things and insist that the whole thing is a useless charade. Objectively, sure, but not everything in life has to be.
I think also if you decide to bow to those constraints, grit your teeth and buy a diamond, you can get ones certified to as less likely to have murder and slavery involved in their extraction. Albeit you'd still be supporting that ridiculous market indirectly. Smashing the stigma against lab diamonds seems like a great idea.
Like srsly how often even does someone look longer than a few seconds on your ring?
I would bet people can't really determine a difference between glass and a diamond
It's so close, even the jeweler has to break out some equipment.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_zirconia#Cubic_zirconia_...
Why practice a personal relationship in a way others have designed?
Isn't it somewhat contrary to the theme of Hacker News? To me, the term "hacking" describes the habit of doing things in a more interesting/efficient/fun way than how they are usually done.
For example, if you haven't lived together for over 3 years and aren't married, then unless there's a will the partner won't inherit anything. If you have a kid, the kid will get most of the inheritance but can't manage the money until they're 18.
Been a few cases in the media here where the kid inherits lots of money on a locked account while the partner that's left struggles to make ends meet.
Some good reasons I've heard.
1. Legally it's a lot simpler if you're married, if one partner dies for the other partner to get control over assets/legacy.
2. For many couples it's a ceremonious way of making a commitment that is recognised and understood between cultures.
3. In some cases, it allows for certain benefits/perks to be shared (tax, healthcare).
4. It's fun to have a party and get family together.
I personally don't see Hacker News as one homogenous culture with a distinct opinion on what "hacking" is. Being curious, rational and experimental, I still think getting married can fit into that.
If you were truly trying to optimise every aspect of life to be some sort of objective best option, I think getting married may or may not be the right option. I do think generally we give too much power to "the culture" over how we live our lives though and so I do think being sceptical of the rituals/ceremonies we're born into is a positive thing.
So, I didn't marry out of infosec concerns.
While I personally would find this very weird, from an infosec perspective, having a relatable backstory should make it easier for you in regards of infosec.
With married status you can conceal things probably better than not.
If your threat model includes crazy people stalking you, my decision is justified.
At least in germany you can go to the Einwohnermeldeamt (citizen Report office) and can request a blockage into your data. This should be enough for a stalker.
Are you allowed to decide what happens to your partner in case of an emergency? Or to decide for her if she is unable to decide anymore?
Also would you save taxes? Here our income is combined and divided 50/50. When I earn 100k and she 20k, we both pay taxes for 60k which comes to something like 100-200$ per month or 2-4% in savings.
If it is similar your stalker already hurts you on a daily basis.
Look up 'marriage tax penalty', if you want to know more.
For me it was a great way to reproduce an image I liked very much, an old image of my baptism/christianing (I'm no longer part of that Organisation) where all my family was together.
We invited them all and we're planning things to make sure it is a great experience for our guests and based on the feedback it worked out.
It should be possible to do this without a crazy event but it is easier with something people know.
Also I was sick to my stomach for a while week and very nervous on the wedding day. I do assume that this experience is unique in itself but I'm not sure how significant this is in a relationship.
Beyond the social convention that "it's the thing to do" at a certain point in a relationship, some reasons are:
- Marriage provides financial assurance for a spouse who will defer their career to raise children.
- Some friends and family (particularly those of the spouse) will absolutely treat you differently when you're married to someone versus in a long-term unmarried relationship.
- Depending on the jurisdiction, spouses have certain rights that unmarried partners do not, e.g. with regards to the legal system and hospital visitation. I know a couple that got married because one of them was an activist/journalist and frequently attended protests in which he was at risk of arrest.
- In some circumstances, it makes it easier to purchase a home together and make other large joint financial investments.
- Under some tax regimes, you pay lower taxes when married.
- U.S. citizens living abroad in a low-tax country with a foreign spouse can engage in advantageous tax planning.
- I believe in the UK (where I live) one has all of the legal and financial implications automatically when a relationship reaches a certain age (3 years I believe). Legally you would be treated the same way as if you were married.
- Friends and family; My family certainly feel this way, my wife's I'm not sure. I'm "mixed"-culture/race/etc so some of my family have different cultural views. My wife and I don't feel strongly either way about how our children deal with this when they grow up, so perhaps our (millenial) generation is changing the "social" side of it already?
- Legally I believe you have all of the rights you describe, however, it may be more difficult to prove the relationship without a piece of paper. We've had to present our marriage certificate for various things relating to our child(ren) for example.
- It _should_ have no effect on your ability to purchase a home in the UK
- There is a tax benefit for low income couples in the UK, but I believe our law doesn't specify "married".
- I don't know how any of this affects UK citizens abroad as I've never looked into it.
They also apply the same treatment to foreigners coming to the UK.
So if you've been living with your boyfriend for long enough, the UK will extend him a spousal visa without you having to get married.
For friends and family, the older relatives on both sides I believe just assume we're married.
There is one difference, and that is in default treatment. If I died/was rendered otherwise incapable of communicating my desires, there is now an onus on my partner to prove that we are in the relationship she claims we are. That exists with marriage too except it's "solved" by a marriage certificate.
That's not true
https://www.moneyadviceservice.org.uk/en/articles/how-to-sor...
The sibling comment mentions family visas, and indeed those are not restricted to your married partner, but separation is completely different matter
There's a myth about such a thing as a "common law marriage" existing, but that's just that: a myth
https://theconversation.com/common-law-marriage-a-myth-neari...
The myth aside, I don't think you have "no" rights, the first link says "fewer". It's really hard to prove something without an "official" document though so I understand how it could be more complicated.
property on dissolving: https://www.ontario.ca/page/dividing-property-when-marriage-...
employment benefits must extend to common law partners: https://www.ontario.ca/document/your-guide-employment-standa...
I think that in many (most?) countries nowadays, marriage is already no more than just a legal status that offers those practical points, so I am not sure if anything needs to change.
You don't have to get a ceremony/ring/party, go at the church or whatever your culture/religion associates with the act of getting married.
You can just sign the contract privately, which makes you legally married.
Same for divorce, I believe it only gets complicated when you fight about children, money and assets, otherwise you can both just decide to stop the contract.
Can you please, please elaborate on this?
U.S. citizens must pay taxes on worldwide income, regardless of what country they live in. Citizens of almost all other countries are not required to do this (they pay income taxes to the country where they live and/or earn income). It's a remarkably raw deal for U.S. citizens abroad, considering that we don't get any services to go along with our tax obligations. You'd think we could at least pop into the consulate for one of those COVID vaccines that are now so plentiful stateside that they can hardly give 'em away, but no.
Now, if you're a U.S. citizen and you live abroad in a country with no income tax (e.g. Monaco) or low income tax (e.g. Bulgaria), and you earn more than the ~$100k limit of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), then you're going to be paying U.S. tax, because you won't have paid enough foreign tax to deduct it all under the Foreign Tax Credit. Also all of your non-"earned" income is going to be subject to U.S. tax - dividends, capital gains, etc.
But let's say you live in Monaco (0%), Bulgaria (10% flat), Dubai (0%), Panama (25% top bracket), or the Cayman Islands (0%) and your spouse is not a U.S. citizen or permanent resident (not a "U.S. person" for IRS purposes). If your excess (> $100k) family income is credited to your spouse (or a company owned by your spouse), and that income is not generated in the USA (e.g. not from a U.S.-based business, rental properties in the U.S., U.S. stocks, or business trips to the U.S.), and you file with status "Married Filing Separately" on your U.S. tax return, then your spouse's income is not included on your tax return.
Say you do consulting out there on your little island in the Bahamas, and your foreign spouse sets up a consulting company and hires you as an employee. You get paid a salary by the company that is conveniently under the FEIE limit and thus pay no U.S. tax. Your spouse gets the dividends and pays no tax on them. So long as this isn't entirely a paper fiction arrangement wherein you do 100% of the work but your spouse gets basically all of the money, for U.S. tax purposes it ought to be kosher. (Again disclaimer: not a tax lawyer, this could be wildly incorrect, consult your own advisor about your specific situation)
Your family company's profits get invested into real estate (again in low-tax / no-tax jurisdictions) in your spouse's name. The passive income from that again flows to your spouse for tax purposes, and as long as you keep filing "Married Filing Separately", your spouse is invisible for U.S. tax purposes and no U.S. tax is due.
This is the only way that I know of, short of renouncing citizenship, for a high-earning U.S. citizen expat to avoid taxation of their worldwide income. You still have to file a bunch of paperwork, though. Also, due to a stupid quirk of IRS policy, because your spouse doesn't have a SSN/ITIN, you can't complete a 1040 in the e-file system and you have to file a paper return. Hope you FedEx'd it to the right address, because only a few IRS offices will accept courier deliveries.
You must also be careful about how you set things up for estate planning purposes. If you both live in the U.S. then there is in general no estate tax due when one spouse dies and bequeaths their assets to the other spouse. If you live in a different country, then it can get very complicated! Depending on who owns the assets, what country they're located in, who owned them before marriage, whether they were "gifted" to the other spouse over time or not, etc., the surviving spouse may owe substantial taxes in one country or the other.
I know it took you a while to type that out but it will make a big difference in my life.
From a practical point of view, once kids where involved and we started looking at things like inheritance, it turns out that many things would be much quicker and easier, legally, if we where married if one of us got very sick or died (in our particular jurisdiction).
I was with computers and sometime electronics for like 40 years already. That alone supplies me with enough "interesting ways". I do not have to have every other aspect of my life to be "interesting". I do not sleep on a stool either.
There are also many convenient practical aspects of registering marriage that are mentioned in other replies.
Currently my wife is humming the first 4 bars of The Star Spangled Banner over and over and over.
The best answer I can come up with is that marriage is a constant battle of wills. A never ending struggle for absolute supremacy over the will of another person. To take an independent human and bend them to your desire or at least drive them crazy.
What's more thrilling than that? Also how can you be more crushed when that's done to you.
In short marriage is 100% pure adrenaline. Now that bloodsports have been abolished it's the purest most glorious release for any sadist out there ... also any masochist because one way or the other you're gonna get a big swig from both cups.
Not long after I got married, I read about Moissanite.
Why do you care what anyone else thinks?
If you are not on the same page as your partner, you have more important concerns than a stupid ring of metal.
I love it.
My ring was a spinner, which people find far more interesting than some pretty stones in it. It cost about $10.
Hers was one with a fingernail-sized stone the colour of her eyes, that cost a few hundred.
The metals matched on eyesight, which was good enough for us.
The rings represented what we expected from our marriage - to join us, the way we were, rather than some showy way of expressing our love. We're no longer in the age of selling a ring to get by if a marriage falls apart or something else happens.
Now, I do have to keep a stock of ring pops around to surprise her with on occasion.
We bought the cheapest gold rings we could fined. 757 gold due to the internet saying that below that, your ring will loose material.
We wanted wolfram but it's bridle, ring size can't be changed and gold was just the easiest at the end.
I think we paid 700$ for both.
It seems the US-focused De Beers marketing campaign from half a century ago is still holding strong.
I've almost never heard of anyone buying engagement rings, diamonds or no diamonds.
I do know a nouveau riche (or aspirational nouveau riche) couple whose wedding bands have tiny diamonds on them.
In my direct environment many people broke with that tradition.
Diamonds are carbon atoms arranged in the most boring fashion, they are almost meteorite poop, and real ones are covered in blood.
There's beauty in imperfection and quirky rocks, they are sort of like a metaphore for life.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/02/ho...
So arguably buying a diamond ring has always been a symbol of wage oppression and terrible mining conditions in Africa, and any right thinking person should boycott it.
Fortunately my SO isn't that struck by sparkly rocks. She prefers antique jewellery with character and history. Her wedding ring is 150 years old.
It's also nice to think that the ring has had a life of its own already and you get to be another chapter in it.
(Added twist: the jeweller couldn't have it ready in time for the ceremony, so we made do with a dime-store trinket, and swapped it later.)
The growth in diamond mine production in the late 1800s tremendously increased diamond supply. DeBeers took advantage of historical perception of rarity and actual lower cost of materials to create a new market.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_jewelry
Although to be fair, this was in part because diamonds are hard to cut and they don't look good without faceted cuts. Diamonds only started becoming popular in the late 1800s when South African mines started producing them in bulk and modern cuts were developed, and they went mainstream once the De Beers marketing engine kicked in after WW2.
I did not get a dianmond, but a Moissanite ring. A couple of things I learned along the way:
- I bought the ring and the Moissenite seperately. I bought the ring at a regular jewelry store (my spouse found one she liked). It is a very HARD sell when you buy the ring to also get the diamond. I ended up buying the ring online to pick it up, and I have wondered since then if they would have refused to sell me the ring if I tried to buy it in store without a diamond.
- I bought the moissanite online. It was nice seeing a linear increase in price on size versus an exponential price difference (I got it from here: https://www.charlesandcolvard.com/ )
- When I took the moissanite to a jewelry store to get it mounted, the "fake" diamond detector actually said the moissanite was a diamond! I was actually very surprised to see that, and I was candid in the fact that I brought them a moissanite.
- As soon as the jewelry store found out I bought them a moissanite, they said they cannot do anything with it. I ended up bringing the ring and moissanite to a store that deals in moissanites.
My spouse likes her ring, and absolutely no one has been able to tell the difference. I have seen is commenting on how "flawless" the "diamond" looks, and the "diamond" must have cost a lot due to it looking flawless.
I really wish I could find them or similar discussion because I’d really like to make a push for a non-diamond ring.
But as other replies here mention - if she wants a diamond, it’s a diamond that she wants.
Or, buy a ring with a cubic zirconia in it, and don't tell anyone. They are almost indistinguishable from diamonds.
I always found the stories that middle-class people are expected to pay 20+K for the wedding ring quite hard to believe, but it may be it's true in some parts of the world.
Largely based on articles I read after watching the film Blood Diamond, actually.
Your SO probably doesn't want a logical gift, she wants something sentimental that makes her feel that you care about her. For some people, that's an expensive rock with no utility, for others it might be something different. But applying logic to what's ultimately an emotional, illogical affair isn't always productive.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-rituals-work/
Big example of real rituals which have purpose, Key Signing Ceremonies. Small example, when I leave somewhere I always pat both pockets twice, everything I absolutely need is always in those pockets, keys, wallet, phone. And so I won't leave them behind.
The weird thing about the diamond engagement ring is that it isn't a powerful symbol of anything. The wedding ring is the powerful symbol, and that would conventionally just be a metal band. You see those everywhere which is of course made more practical by their being a simple metal band.
After my wallet fell out of my pants pocket into my office chair and I thought I'd lost it for 2 days, I updated this ritual to do it every time I walk through a doorway. That way if I lose something I know exactly which room it's in.
Was just about to post this. I didn't start doing this on purpose, but at some point I noticed I was.
On the other hand, a loving relationship and marriage is worth much more than a diamond ring ever could be. When you have a caring wife and you both love and help each other you’ll get an immeasurable improvement in your life.
To conclude, yes it’s overpriced, yes there are problems with diamond mining, yes DeBeers artificially controls the supply, and yes you can find a rarer stone for less, or something more exotic, but your wife wants a diamond, so you buy a diamond and hopefully live a happy life.
The ring is basically a sacrifice, which goes with the "blood diamond" thing pretty neatly.
It was around what you would expect an engagement ring to cost you in this region of the world, the lens cover is made out of sapphire crystal so the jewelry aspect is there, and should I perish in an accident the resale value should give her 2-3 months of runway assuming she moves in with my family, considering we have an infant daughter.
On top of that she very much enjoys the practical aspect of this gift.
But a ring is still needed for the ceremony.
I bought some small amounts of rose gold and white gold, gave it to a custom jeweler and told them to do whatever they always wanted to do (but no client ever accepted) using only the gold I bought.
They gave me back a rose gold ring, with a gigantic "gemstone" made of the white gold I bought.
From far away, the ring made everyone think it had a huge diamond on it. It was really funny.
Total cost $1000 including labor, not cheap but at least the ring was special. Formally proposed with it and my wife liked it.
My wife, as promised, never wore it after the wedding. She likes to be not robbed.
She works as a physical therapist now and wears a silicon ring because she bent the wedding ring giving CPR to a patient in a hospital a few years ago (patient lived).
As far as friends and family goes, they can get over it. I actually have a lot of fun telling people about the current scam that are diamonds, if they make any sideways remarks about my wife and my preferences. There really is no defending the diamond industry, so if they are pushy or too nosy, it's an easy argument to 'win'.
Observationally, younger couples who have been dating longer tend to care less about rings. Older couples who have been dating less seem to care more.
( I also managed to accidentally end two relationships that were already going in the wrong direction by casually mentioning my concerns about diamonds. At least I noticed how it was being interpreted the second time. 8-/ No complaints with how that accidentally played out. )
1. Man made diamonds. Better clarity and color and larger gems for the same price. Or the same gem for a smaller price.
2. Second hand mined diamonds. Better jewelers, deceased estates, auction houses like Sotheby's and Christie's etc.
3. Other precious stones which are not diamonds.
4. Not buying a stone or a ring (eg if she doesn't take your surname and you don't wish to have traditional gender roles it would be unreasonable to expect a gem to be provided).
> Although diamonds have traditionally only been a very small share of the 100 million pieces Pandora sells worldwide each year, Mr Lacik believes that will be boosted by lower prices.
What the eventual fallout will be, who knows.
They are the real thing. A better way of wording this would be:
> Man-made diamonds are today all but indistinguishable from their mined counterparts.
They’re nice gems but true traditionalists generally prefer other gemstones. It’s about time the world moves on from the mined diamond charade.
That said I wonder if this isnt because its easier to restrict supply with branded artificial diamonds, compared to mined ones. If they expect the diamond rich regions of africa to stabilize in the next two decades, then they have to move away from natural diamonds asap.
>Although diamonds have traditionally only been a very small share of the 100 million pieces Pandora sells worldwide each year, Mr Lacik believes that will be boosted by lower prices.
Those who see value in a synthetic diamond over a CZ should also see the value some perceive in a natural diamond over a synthetic. And those who see value in a CZ over nothing at all should see why some value a synthetic diamond and so on.
Some people just ascribe value to these things, probably in the same way others value comics, baseball cards, art, NFTs...
So let people value what they want rather than pass judgement.
"Pandora also emphasized price as a consideration behind its decision. Lab-made stones cost about a third of mined ones and the switch will make diamond jewelry accessible to more consumers, it said."
In other words, this is a cost-cutting measure that happens to have environmental and ethical benefits: everybody wins. But somehow the headline is "Jeweler Pandora Takes Ethical Stand Against Mined Diamonds".
It can't be both an ethical stand an a convenient way to increase profits.
Why not?
That's when "Breach of Promise to Marry" laws gradually were abolished across the US. So now men could propose, enjoy premarital sex for a while, only to leave the woman no longer a virgin and possibly with STDs and/or pregnant.
The very expensive diamond you can keep even if he leaves became the "insurance policy" to replace the legal option.
All I could find is this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=An76-kLVvZI
(I think the guy had some conflict of interest since he owned a diamond shop or something but still really intetesting research)
The YAG (yttrium aluminum garnet) is https://www.stagandfinch.com/product-page/Paraiba-YAG
It looks like nothing else out there.. And she's happy that we didnt contribute to the slave and blood diamond trade.
The article also mentions -
"The largest US producer, Diamond Foundry, says its process is "100% hydro-powered, meaning zero emissions"."
So they might be worth a look.
Ehm... They are still selling diamonds, just lab-grown. Optically identically to the ugly and boring ones.
They're wrong of course. Diamonds are flammable and also decompose (slowly) in sunlight.
There are many comments below that come from the point of view that diamond rings don't make sense. On one hand this is completely true. On the other hand, whether they do or don't make sense depends on who's evaluating and there are many perspectives one could come at this from.
I wanted to share my point of view and how it evolved in case it helps as nuance (or helps people understand when their partner is coming from)
Growing up really poor and practical, I thought of diamond engagement rings as really stupid and impractical and that I would either never buy one, or buy one begrudgingly.
Fast forward to a few years ago I met the woman that I am now married to. She grew up very differently from me and in many ways we think very differently. For example she values "how things work" and "tradition" much more than I do, because I focus on first principles thinking and how things ought to change.
So her attitude towards diamond rings wasn't "I need something this expensive" or "you'll do it if you love me" but simply "this is how it works."
It would be easy to say that my attitude was more nuanced and evolved but I also recognized that I had dated plenty of women who thought more like I do (in general and perhaps on this topic specifically) but that I didn't want to marry them. That I wanted to marry this woman because of who she is, and her tradition focus is part of that, and her attitude towards diamonds is part of THAT.
I also noticed how women around her felt about their rings. They loved them and thought they were special. Her parents had just celebrated their 40th anniversary and her dad chose to buy her mom a new diamond ring which she loves.
So here I was and my option was to either "put my foot down" and have our engagement go along my original principles or to recognize that my partner by nature of who she is sees it differently and to recognize how much joy and sentiment she will get out of it. I realized it's a no-brainer.
I ended up having fun with it. Visiting old Jewish diamond dealers in dusty and super secured upstairs offices in NYs diamond district. Looking through loupes at the makeup and imperfections until I found a stone that resonated with me.
Long story short I don't regret the approximately 20k I had spent for a second. It has brought more than than worth of joy already. I "get it" more now than I did before.
We can say it's all marketing but everything is marketing, or rather product market fit. We don't really judge people for spending more money (or its equivalent, time) on things that make them happy. If someone spends 20k more on a car because they love it, or have 20k worth of vintage video games in their house, we don't get worked up about it. Those things are marketing too but the product resonated with the audience and I think the diamonds are much the same.
Again it's all about who you are proposing to. The person's attitudes towards things are holistic. If I wanted to marry someone who thought more like I used to, I could have. But turned out the partner I needed was someone who thinks differently - and when you do that you have to accept that and make them happy in a way that makes sense for them.