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The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

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Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#391

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That's the whole idea. There is no secondary market for diamonds - it's not a scarce resource. Scarcity is completely artificial, combined with decades of marketing campaigns. "Diamonds are forever". Yeah, they are - because once you buy it, you can't really sell it to break even, let alone make a profit. Gold has natural market price fluctuations at least.

No, there has to be a secondary market somewhere because professional diamond theft is a thing. So they have to be able to fence the diamonds somewhere. And this isn't a small time thing, either; there have been a few diamond heists in the past couple of decades in the tens of millions of dollars/pounds/euros each, involving serious professional criminals.

It's because diamonds are mostly untraceable. If you steal it, nobody can tell if a diamond sold 2 years ago was at one point stolen or not.

But actual diamond jewellery is mostly priced like artwork. The worth of the actual separate components has very little to do with the price of the item.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#392
post #342

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Part of the comparison here is that the alternatives are both cheaper and practically better. So it doesn't apply so much unless you chose to buy, say, clothes from brand A that were indistinguishable from brand B to normal people but cost more and involved more child labour. Or if apple made a special phone you could buy that looked the same but cost 10x as much because it also includes payments to warlords. > Call…

> Part of the comparison here is that the alternatives are both cheaper and practically better. It's not the case here, because you're not buying gems for their practical value. If you were, then there would not be an issue - lab-grown diamonds for cutting things would be even cheaper than they are, and you wouldn't care about other gems unless you were playing with lasers or something. As much a I hate it, the entir…

Jewelry is not unpractical, it's like an insurance for bad times. When shit hits the fan you still have your jewelry to sell.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#393
post #358

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Well, if you think about it, mass manufacturing, progress in industrial chemistry, plastics, etc, did a lot of impossible things super cheap. We have disposable pieces of plastics worth 10 cents that if teleported back to 1600 in bulk (say, 1000 units) would have cost entire counties back then, including the people living on them: light, strong, elaborate and very precisely machined. Look at this thing: https://www.d…

Road quality in 1600s would make it quite difficult I think.

I was thinking that about 2 months ago. And then I saw people doing bikepacking/long distance bike touring, and I was quite amazed. With wide enough tires, adequate tire pressure control and seat suspension, people ride huge distances with no problems, on old fashion dirt roads.

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.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because I definitely want to spend the rest of my life with someone who's hypnotized by multi-generational marketing campaigns into wearing industrial abrasives as a status symbol. who wouldn't?

Diamonds were desirable jewelery way before anyone had the idea of using them in industry. It's true that the association with engagement rings is a new "tradition" invented by advertisers, but wearing diamond jewelery is not.

Not this level of worship, they were worn because they were shiny, and so were all the other precious stones, so was silver and gold. Diamonds had no real elevated value globally as jewelry before debeers marketing came along.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#395
post #376
post #361

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You're talking about Central and Northern Europe (+ their colonies). Christmas in Eastern Europe and most other places looked nothing like that. Heck, Seychelles and Hawaii decorate their local trees like they're fir trees in Scandinavia.

Yes the tradition spread, but people don’t live in the same place our ancestors did 600 years ago either. Traditions diffuse across generations, cultures, and geographic borders that doesn’t somehow make them new or fake.

I don't recall where I read it, but:

> Yes the tradition spread, but people don’t live in the same place our ancestors did 600 years ago either.

Yes, they do :-)

The vast majority of people, especially in underdeveloped or developing countries, DO live in the general area where their ancestors moved during the last migration, which for some was thousands of years ago. People really don't move away unless it's easy or they're forced to.

And my comment also included stuff like food. Most current food is modern.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#396

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Guys, buying diamonds, can complain all day about what a rip off it is (it is). But if you apprise your fiancé of the alternatives / opp costs (moissanite, man made, second hand, etc) and she still wants a new diamond, just get her a new diamond. It will make her happy for years. My wife had her heart set on a pink diamond, so that’s what I got her. I made it clear though that if I got this, she is not getting a new…

I guess that works for most men. Personally, one of my criteria is that she can't want a diamond, that might sound crazy but I want a partner in life that is financially sensible and fiscally responsible, we have to leave our children with more than we were left with or we have failed, that is a core part of my philosophy of family building. Thankfully I found her. I also had a talk with her dad about it after I met…

Having children is not financially nor fiscally sensible. And it's also bad for the environment.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#397

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Currently the US government holds 8,134 metric tons of gold in reserves. You can call it "hording" (whatever that means) but clearly someone thinks it's worth keeping half a trillion dollars worth of the country's money in it.

> You can call it "hording" (whatever that means) Isn't it "hoarding" (acquiring an excessive number of items and storing them in a chaotic manner)?

i would imagine the most powerful democracy in the world would have a better approach to structuring the reserves than "storing them in a chaotic manner"?

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently the US government holds 8,134 metric tons of gold in reserves. You can call it "hording" (whatever that means) but clearly someone thinks it's worth keeping half a trillion dollars worth of the country's money in it.

Sure...maybe...if you believe that gold is actually there and who knows if it is. But either way, 1/2 a trillion is just 1/8th of the yearly federal budget. Not sure it is an amount that matters much to the government.

of course, pocket change, probably driven by lunatic sentiments from the centuries past.

Re: The diamond world takes radical steps to stop a pricing plunge

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole diamond market absolutely is a scam, you'd think it would violate some anti-trust laws of some sort but apparently no, everything is "legal"... go figure.

There are plenty of perfectly legal scams. You can buy "quantum radiation remover stickers" on eBay, have been there for years. Apple stores get overnight queues of people on release dates. Homeopathy is paid for by the German public health system.

> Homeopathy is paid for by the German public health system.

It's worth noting that "anthroposophic medicine" (not just homeopathy) while paid for by the German public health care system is explicitly treated differently than actual medicine. There's a lot of "alternative medicine" treatments that are covered by German public health insurance but they're explicitly considered "treatments" not "cures". This entails a different standard of evidence: anthroposophic "medicine" only needs to demonstrate an absence of harm whereas actual medicine needs to empirically demonstrate a balance of positive effects and negative side-effects. Anthroposophic "medicine" sometimes cites studies involving self-reported effects but the health claims are strictly controlled, you can't e.g. claim your sugar pills cure cancer just because there's a bogus self-report study indicating cancer patients felt better with it.

I'm not defending the coverage of "alternative medicine" by health insurance. Customers should be able to easily understand whether the product the pharmacy is selling them is an actual medical drug or just an expensive filler or a "natural remedy" with no demonstrated health effects - and ideally the latter shouldn't be sold in pharmacies (or at all) to begin with and certainly not with (implied) health claims.

But thanks to German consumer protection laws there is a line for what claims you can get away with and which ones will get you sued. It's not as tight as I'd like it, but it's there and it has an effect, unlike homeopathy. In other words: while "quantum radiation removal" is hard to even evaluate as a claim as it's entirely made up woo, selling "quantum radiation remover stickers to prevent cancer and AIDS" (or selling stickers that are unsafe and will cause cancer if used as intended) crosses an important line turning the latter illegal in Germany.

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