De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

I think De Beers is looking at a revenue/margin maximization endgame. I wouldn't be surprised to see Anglo American sell De Beers off within a couple of years.

And the price of synthetics compared to equivalent quality/weight naturals will continue to fall. Synthetic/natural prices are now ~70%, whereas a little over a year ago, they were ~90%. Hydrogen, methane and microwaves are much cheaper than titanic mines.

[1] https://www.economist.com/international/2017/02/25/a-report-...

Like anything powerful, an intelligent person calls for caution.

A lot of people are worrying about GMO in food because we don't have enough data about them. We are changing things that could have important biological, health and ecological impacts, but the companies producing them are not willing to test them extensively for safety during 20 years before selling them.

We don't know what are the long term effects of cross breeding the GMO species with non GMO ones. We don't know the long term effects of the fauna. We don't known the long term (on decades) effects of ingesting any of them.

What we know is that if you give mouses the GMO food in isolation for a short time, they don't develop apparent problems. That's not a lot to go on, especially since very simple products, like processed meat, revealed themself as being carcinogenous on the long run (http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/).

That's not science to me. That's business as usual.

I don't trust business. History taught me that for profit entities don't make the right decisions on this. After all, we knew asbestos was dangerous in 1920, but had to wait 1980 to act on it. After all, we fed cows with meat while knowing it's an herbivore, leading to spongiform encephalopathy. After all, we used the least safe nuclear technology we knew about because it was more suited for our military ambitions.

On a technology as complex as GMO, with a lot of interactions in different systems, it can take a lot of time to realize something is wrong. If it happens, it will take even more time before we act. The companies creating GMO will then, as usual, protect them-self to the extreme, and eventually just pay some money to get out of trouble, money they already earned by selling the GMO anyway.

So yes, whether it's GMO in food, nano-particles or anything that is very potent, I think it's fair to say "hey, slow down, we are not doing our homework here" when the other side is just trying to sell it to everybody.

It's a matter of agenda.

Read this article: https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/05/29/de-beers-to-sell...

Read the last paragraph:

The move also comes at a sensitive time for De Beers and its relationship with Botswana, the source of three-quarters of its diamonds. The two have a sales agreement that gives De Beers the right to market and sell the diamonds from Botswana. The deal, which gives De Beers its power over global prices, will soon be up for negotiation and Botswana is likely to push for more concessions.

So this is not about man-made diamonds; it's a negotiating tactic! They'll use this move to pressure Botswana to accept weaker conditions and less money.

It's also discarding the real suffering of all the people that were affected by the 3 major nuclear accidents. I have a friend of mine who his medicated for life because of Chernobyl.

Black and white are rarely the winning colors.