The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QSrBIIC4po

The reason I linked a bike above was that they truly are a modern marvel. So unassuming and yet so flexible, reliable and overall... powerful, plus cheap by modern standards. A bike is probably the most accessible high tech modern invention that we take for granted.

https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/privacy/cloudflare...

> To counter such threats, Mozilla has partnered with Cloudflare to provide direct DNS resolution from within the Firefox browser using the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox. What this means is that whenever you select or type a web address in the Firefox browser your DNS lookup request will be sent over a secure channel to the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox rather than to an unknown DNS resolver, significantly decreasing the odds of any unwanted spying or man in the middle attacks.

Our friends and family were obsessed and not six months later I got a text from a now engaged friend who wanted to know how we found them. He also opted for a green sapphire because it matched her eyes.

Non-diamond rings sell themselves, someone (and it can be you) just needs to break the seal.

Signalling conformity with social norms is also important to some people.

(Going on a tangent: compare Bitcoin's proof-of-work, which also has utility. Of course, that doesn't mean diamonds nor proof-of-work are the best bang-for-buck. For the latter, you can use proof-of-stake or avoid cryptocurrencies altogether. For the former, there are plenty of other social arrangements that avoid diamond rings.)

I think that's a bridge too far.

There's many clear reasons why people want a diamond, and even an angle like "I want to follow society's expectations" is to me far from being irrational when you're prepping yourself to build a whole life with someone else.

A couple can discuss these matters and come up with alternative paths, people are referencing other materials and I'd include not buying anything fancy and save up for the first payment of their home for instance. But brides requesting a diamond is usually far from lacking rationale.

That's not the argument, AIUI. The argument is "Go ahead and spend $FOO on a rock, just be sure not to lie about how much you spent".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_the_diamond_...

It actually doesn't matter how she finds out that you lied to her about the biggest life change she will ever experience for the rest of her life. What matters is that lying to a person you want to marry is a sure-fire way to end the marriage at some definite future point.

Arguing that it's okay because you will never be found out isn't relevant.

Adults have free will.

Precisely why I prefer small intimate events with my friends and don’t want a big event like a wedding.

And yet, during both those times you will have no meaningful engagement with all those people you care about.

If you want your wedding to be a meaningful event, you need to keep it small; the larger a party[1] is, the less engagement the host will get with the average attendee.

[1] You shouldn't forget that a wedding is nothing more than an expensive party that everyone else will forget.

Mining is still dangerous work. The workers are still underpaid. The profits are still stolen by companies that are literally the vestiges of European colonialism.

And yeah of course what he thinks matters too. If you're both awful people then you deserve each other.

Also, ‘a few days salary’ rather defeats the rituals purpose.

From poor people destroying their lives in Congo open pit mines to deBeers laughing in your face when selling you small rock which is not that rare for as much money as you are willing to accept. And if you got any form of certificate from then that your specific diamond is not blood diamond, well that paper has less value than used toilet paper, nobody could ever check or enforce that. So people here mentioning how their wives glow when looking at diamonds, well they are looking at shiny human suffering. And if future wife doesn't care enough about that, well you just learned a very interesting personality trait of her, without the need to go through years of relationship.

Financially, yes, I need to leave them better off than me, inflation adjusted of course. Education, good habits, good examples, all of these things matter to me as well.

That variety of woman is best rented.

there is also a great distinction between "Yeah I know another helping of chocolate syrup on my ice cream is a bad decision, but it'll make me feel good today.", and "You need to make a 10kUSD+ purchase on a totally arbitrary piece of jewelry that very well may have incited real human suffering and violence, even though I know that desire is irrational and poorly balanced."

I would assume -- maybe incorrectly, I admit -- that this form of irrationality would follow the individual and subsequently the entire relationship.

We all have different 'red flag dictionaries', so by all means people should live their lives; but I doubt I am alone in my assumptions.

However, I personally think the "rings must have a very expensive diamond" thing to be very silly. I know that it may be subjectively very important to the potential recipient, but that it seems to sometimes really be so inflexible feels murky in the "what normally tacit power dynamic in this relationship is this revealing?" sort of way. The only significant tangible difference between the diamond and moissanite is the mental totem: "It is a diamond, he bought a diamond for me. He wanted to buy something else but I wanted this and he got it". Which is a problem when it comes to that: that the recipient cannot budge on something so arbitrary. It feels more like the whispers of the DeBeers cultural brainwashing: "You don't deserve to have her if the sacrifice you made to purchase this wasn't big enough"

If a woman gets X amount of utility from a diamond ring over an alternative, how would it be invalid if I said I got -X utility from having to purchase it?

This is one of those hard to beat arguments where I know I'm not facing a purely rational point of view. I understand it, that's why I added the first paragraph of this response. It's one of those issues where I feel I'd need to have a Christopher Hitchens level of rhetorical skill to make any headway in my favor.

If I disagree with it, I'd think "their loss, sucks to have weird arbitrary standards"

If I agreed then I'd have been lying about my happiness with the relationship.

Either way some things need to be said. I haven't seen any good arguments in favor of purchasing a diamond ring which don't seem to dismiss and devalue the agency and right to an opinion of the purchaser.

Even then, I'd be very careful to deliver the message in the most amenable way possible.

Diamond wedding rings have only been en vogue since De Beers' 1946 marketing campaign. It's a garish facet of soulless modernity masquerading as classical. Even the notion of pampering one's wife is a way of maintaining the patriarchal division of labor by keeping women in a dependent role.

In a world where money talks, insisting that men afford diamonds while women only receive them is tantamount to disenfranchisement and an abridgement of women's free expression. Are we equal partners, or is she your domestic servant? Are you the gatekeeper of her wealth and, therefore, speech and agency?

What a man buying a diamond ring "represents" is his agreement to financially provide, while the woman’s acceptance of the ring "represents" her agreement not to pursue financial independence.

You're asking the wrong questions and giving the wrong answers to them.

Wrong questions: Those things don't matter in a serious, mature relationship, or are a low priority. The question is, what does your partner think? If it's important to them, then it's important. QED. That's because you care about your partner infinitely more and everything else is bullshit.

Wrong answers: If it's not important to your partner, then you discuss it. But you're still wrong: The correct answer is not to bother with the discussion, but to make sure your partner feels listened to, respected, and supported. Make sure you feel that way too, or your relationship will eventually bomb.

More wrong answers: If all of the above is done, and there's still room to discuss it, go for it. But you are still wrong: My impression is that you and the GGP seem to think that your opinions (and the grand HN consensus) are truths. Your opinion is just one limited take on reality.; your partner will have their own take, and, crucially: it's completely independent of you and your judgment; you have no business evaluating it; you just accept it. You listen, be curious about their take - give them space and time, because when you cut people off with your opinion, you actually never hear theirs (a widespread mistake of the arrogant, trapping them in ignorance). You take it in, challenge your own ideas. Then, finally, you are right to express yourself.

All the sellers I have seen so far but White Flash seem to at best have a tiny, monocolor «Hearts & Diamonds» logo - which makes it hard to judge for yourself. And at this point the prices are low enough that it doesn't seem to make sense to settle for less if your goal is something like an engagement ring.

I don't know, maybe I am exaggerating the importance of this - (and maybe moissanite or even cubic zirconium would actually make for even better optical properties) - but it does seem like that diamond buyers are overwhelmingly getting taken advantage of : https://beyond4cs.com/truth-about-gia-triple-excellent-diamo...

I was interested enough from this article that I was willing to try to find out by myself (including comparing with similar crystals) - but annoyingly White Flash is US based and doesn't export to my country.

Put another way, if we look at all the parallel realities of Earth, even prior to the discovery of gold, I suspect the overwhelming majority of them would end up using it as a major store of value. It's just really perfect for it! We may even find alien civilizations, assuming a comparable elemental distribution to Earth, doing the same!

Similar to not buying clothing from someone deceased or a wedding dress from someone divorced.

Can argue that this is not very rational. But much about the wedding process isn't :)