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Diamonds Suck (2006)

diamondssuck.com

151–160 of 229 posts

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The motive is profit. >Louis Vuitton bags are scarce by manufacture but this is not artificial. Are you suggesting that LV bags are scarce because for the 4000$ price range they can't figure out a way to make more bags? I would make the suggestion that their scarcity is entirely atrificial to inflate prices.

> I would make the suggestion that their scarcity is entirely artificial to inflate prices. You're suggesting people pay $4,000 for a LV bag because LV is limiting their supply and they're difficult to find? I don't think that's the case. They're expensive because only LV can produce bags with their logo, and they're charging as much as people are willing to pay. Artificial scarcity might be the case for a special ed…

>You're suggesting people pay $4,000 for a LV bag because LV is limiting their supply and they're difficult to find?

I'm really not

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give her a blood diamond to show my affection? No thanks. I'm not brainwashed to think love is suitably communicated through the purchase of goods and services. Excess money not being invested? By golly I better not use it for any form of good; it must obviously go to De Beers! Just tell someone you love them and do nice things for them and be there for them. It's free.

It's not, and it doesn't need to be a diamond -- it could be flowers, a nice dinner, a exciting getaway together to some obscure place, etc. But the way you're expressing this is you'd laugh someone away for buying something for you. I'm into mechanical watches. Just because I find them interesting, not for show. I'm not brainwashed, but heck, getting one I really want from someone I love would be close to the ultima…

I was talking about diamonds and extravagence desired purely to display wealth and social status (women are particularly vulnerable to this folly), not dinner dates, flowers, and mechanical watches.

Like the two month salary rule for an engagement ring would be a ludicrous thing to expect of a man. Run from that woman.

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#153

> If I can prevent a single reader from needlessly dropping $6,000-10,000+ on a diamond engagement ring, this site will be a success. Financial worries are the #1 cause of stress in a married relationship - there is absolutely NO excuse to start your married life by taking on that level of debt. Average U.S. wedding cost $30k in 2014, while the average engagement ring was $5600, or 19% of the cost [0] https://www.val…

I paid for my own wedding. My wife took the first pass at planning it. We priced out her dream wedding. It was close to $35k. My wife, bless her heart, hates spending money, so it didn’t take much to convince her to dial back expectations. We started googling for ‘state park weddings’ and found a great park an hour outside of town on the waterfront with a barn. It cost us $500 to book it for the day. We tracked down…

I'll 2nd the "state park wedding" thought. Our county maintains about a dozen historic buildings, all of which can be rented for a small fraction the cost of a commercial venue.

Our ceremony was held at a small 19th century chapel. The reception was at an 18th century mill house. Worked out great.

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I would make the suggestion that their scarcity is entirely artificial to inflate prices. You're suggesting people pay $4,000 for a LV bag because LV is limiting their supply and they're difficult to find? I don't think that's the case. They're expensive because only LV can produce bags with their logo, and they're charging as much as people are willing to pay. Artificial scarcity might be the case for a special ed…

>You're suggesting people pay $4,000 for a LV bag because LV is limiting their supply and they're difficult to find? I'm really not

You said there's an artificial shortage of LV bags which is causing the inflated prices. I can't see any other way to interpret what you said.

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#155
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not kidding! My wife was a wedding coordinator for nearly a decade and I used to joke with her "What next, wedding water?" Then someone got the bright idea to buy bottled water wholesale, label it with the wedding details and sell the result at a huge markup.

Startup idea: Wedding air. Get an air compressor and bottle the air at the wedding. Sell bottles of the stuff so people can catch a whiff of the big day later.

Wedding rain, sold in convenient spray bottles.

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#156

> If I can prevent a single reader from needlessly dropping $6,000-10,000+ on a diamond engagement ring, this site will be a success. Financial worries are the #1 cause of stress in a married relationship - there is absolutely NO excuse to start your married life by taking on that level of debt. Average U.S. wedding cost $30k in 2014, while the average engagement ring was $5600, or 19% of the cost [0] https://www.val…

Not everything is about money though. Want to have an extravagant wedding? Fine. Want something basic? Also fine. Yes: diamonds, jewellery, mechanical watches etc are all bad value for money. People don't buy them because they're bad value. They buy them because they like wearing them, and women buy jewellery because it makes them feel pretty. That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime.

Yes, you're right. I don't understand the myopia on this forum when it comes to people spending money irrationally. Human beings are not hyper-efficient savings maximization engines. Every time the story about why "diamonds suck" hits the front page (maybe once a year or so?), the same rounds of patting-on-the-back are exchanged in the comments for rehashing a one-dimensional social commentary that buying diamonds is silly.

Yes of course it's silly! But that's not the point, and it never has been. Once you're at the point of buying a gift that costs far more than its intrinsic, utilitarian value, worrying about its "true scarcity" is just haggling on the details. I purchased an engagement ring for my wife that costed about $30,000. She didn't ask for anything remotely as extravagant as that, but she likes it and I enjoy it for frankly vain reasons. I take immense pleasure out of the reactions it elicits from other people. Despite being very clear-eyed about the artificial scarcity of diamonds and DeBeers marketing, I still bought it because I enjoyed being able to make a frivolous purchase. Personally I don't like spending a lot on things that aren't either experiential or somewhat long-lasting, so I'd never spend much at all on a wedding dress. But I don't begrudge people for spending money inefficiently if they can afford it.

We're all the same species. With very few exceptions, none of us is hyper-vigilant, hyper-rational or hyper-efficient. There are many, many things we idly buy which are artificially scarce or inflated in price. Buying them is not categorically different from buying expensive jewelry under a cultural zeitgeist perpetuated by a global conglomerate. I think most people really don't have much self-awareness about how high their floor of wealth and personal spending is over the ceiling of frugality and efficiency they talk about so much.

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#157

Yes, this post missing the point that I as a diamond buyer already know this but it will not stop me from purchasing more diamonds. In a hypothetical world, if a diamond could be bought for $10K and sold for $10K, where is the risk? Then it's no longer for only rich, others can take a loan from a bank and purchase diamonds. When I pay for a diamond, I don't pay for its intrinsic value. I pay for diamonds because othe…

When I pay for a diamond, I don't pay for its intrinsic value. I pay for diamonds because other people around me feel they are expensive and you've to be rich enough to set your money on fire (like you do while purchasing a diamond). It's a signal for others that I am "fuck you money" rich.

This may have been a sarcastic post (?) but why do you care if other people think you have "fuck you money"? That just makes you look intellectually weak and poor imho.

But here's one thing that "fuck you money" won't buy: class.

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#158
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not kidding! My wife was a wedding coordinator for nearly a decade and I used to joke with her "What next, wedding water?" Then someone got the bright idea to buy bottled water wholesale, label it with the wedding details and sell the result at a huge markup.

Startup idea: Wedding air. Get an air compressor and bottle the air at the wedding. Sell bottles of the stuff so people can catch a whiff of the big day later.

What about wedding gas, if the wedding dinner fails to create any flatulence?

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#159
I always thought of the engagement ring tradition as a financial safety-net for a woman, in a culture where it was customary that only men work and women stay home. Woman in such setup has no "her" money, but if she owns an expensive ring that she can easily sell that gives her some level of freedom, if needed.

Re: Diamonds Suck (2006)

#160
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everything is about money though. Want to have an extravagant wedding? Fine. Want something basic? Also fine. Yes: diamonds, jewellery, mechanical watches etc are all bad value for money. People don't buy them because they're bad value. They buy them because they like wearing them, and women buy jewellery because it makes them feel pretty. That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime.

> That's life. It's fine throwing money away sometime. Sure if you have the money. The problem is that most people don’t and spend what would be a down payment on a house on complete bullshit. It’s a terrible way to start a marriage and likely leads to higher rates of divorce.

That strikes me as a problem with fiscal irresponsibility, not a problem with the object of the irresponsibility.
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