One-page, seizure-free view:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/1982/02/have-you-e...
Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
191–200 of 239 posts
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I swear, De Beers has probably pulled off the greatest marketing stunt in the history of humanity. De Beers has the advantage of selling a luxury good. The point of buying a diamond is to demonstrate one's financial ability. People don't really want cheap diamonds. I doubt their marketing campaign is a good pattern for normal products.
The trick is to turn a less luxurious good into a luxury good. Which is rather like what they did. Cars are an area where this is really common. BMW doesn't bring their lower end stuff into the US. Toyota created Lexus to be a luxury brand. Or there's the pricier sorts of bottled water...
Lobster is exactly the same thing. Up until the mid-19th century, it was low class food - something only the very poor would eat. Now it's served with steak.
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#193Fantastic read. Bernays (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays) was also an interesting character.
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started thinking about this issue a few days ago and have yet to come up with a strategy for convincing a (future) partner on the follies of purchasing a diamond. Is there any recourse at all to the epic marketing job De Beers has masterminded?
Artificial diamonds are solid, physical proof of the achievement of mankind. We've taken the most regular, durable objects that nature can produce and we've duplicated and bettered them. Every time you look at an artificial diamond, that's science, right there, concentrated and almost literally crystallized.
That's great if you're marrying a woman who is a scientist. Everyone else will just roll their eyes, unfortunately.
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
That my all be true, but at the root of it, I find the concept revolting. I mean demonstrating your economic viability as a spouse. It is actually the most unromantic thing ever, because it means at the end of the day you marry for economic reasons, not for love. Which is OK, but then don't pretend for it to be romantic. As for remembering a moment, I don't see why something expensive is required. You could as well c…
Isn't it possible to love someone because they are the kind of person who is considered economically valuable by society? Such a person is romantically desirable because they offer more resources and their offspring are more likely to survive to adulthood. (sort of an evolutionary biology / Ayn Rand-ian concept, of course, but I see this kind of reverence for 'the best' coming from some people)
That's what usually happens, I guess. I remember from an old Steven Pinker book that there is a theory that love is a necessary craziness, because without it we would constantly be looking for better mates (the rational thing to do). That would explain why falling in love makes people do silly things, because they demonstrate "I am crazy, therefore you can trust that I will stay with you".
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#196I got my wife a moissonite ring. I took it to a jewelry store once to get it cleaned. The person there went on about how beautiful it was. I said it was moissonite and she quickly said we don't work on moissonite and handed the ring back and left. Everyone assumes it is diamond because it is double refractive and actually brighter than diamond. Only a gemmologist would know the difference.
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
The trick is to turn a less luxurious good into a luxury good. Which is rather like what they did. Cars are an area where this is really common. BMW doesn't bring their lower end stuff into the US. Toyota created Lexus to be a luxury brand. Or there's the pricier sorts of bottled water...
Lobster is exactly the same thing. Up until the mid-19th century, it was low class food - something only the very poor would eat. Now it's served with steak.
That's partly because they were overfished to near the point of extinction since they were so cheap (early last century a bucket of lobsters costs a dollar).
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#198Wow, absolutely brilliant. I can't believe this article popped up on HN's front page tonight. I just got back from looking at engagement rings with my girlfriend. I've known about this monopoly for a while, and so has she. Heck, one of the first movies we watched together when we first started dating 7 years ago was Blood Diamond. Here's the conversation we had while in the jewellery store tonight. Me: "Sweety, I rea…
I had almost the same conversation with my fiancee. Fast forward nine months, she loves her moissanite ring. I think what changed her mind was actually seeing a moissanite — it is very obviously not "fake," and the stone's fire is amazing.
Incidentally, rather than pitch it as "the ones you buy are created in a lab and are cheap," I'd go for something more along the lines of "they grow them through a natural process, kinda like pearls." It's not scientific, but it's true enough.
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Free markets always tend towards monopoly/oligopoly/cartel structures in the long term - because the firms that do so retain their pricing advantage (profits) and the firms that don't - die. I have to think that the idea of free/natural markets has to be one of the greatest tricks ever pulled by anyone at any time (next to communism). Markets are artificial and restrictive for a reason - they're created by government…
I think you've got this wrong. Any firm that defects from the cartel will tend to gain market share at the expense of all the firms that remain in the cartel. Thus, its really the firms in that remain in the cartel that die. So the whole thing looks a lot like a Prisoner's Dilemma game played between the firms looking to cartelize. Now, they might do things like sign contracts between each other to prevent defection,…
> And when I think of successful cartels in history I think of DeBeers and OPEC and... well, those are the only two I could name that lasted longer than a few years.
Another would be drug cartels. They keep prices artificially high so that everyone gets a share of the profits. But cartels in general always have players that "cheat" by independently lowering/raising the price. If a player is caught cheating, the cartel usually punishes the rogue player by excluding them from future pricing meetings and use their market share to kill the player both figuratively and literally when drugs are involved.
Re: Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I started thinking about this issue a few days ago and have yet to come up with a strategy for convincing a (future) partner on the follies of purchasing a diamond. Is there any recourse at all to the epic marketing job De Beers has masterminded?
Find someone who's not into that whole thing. Not everyone is the same. There are highly ethical people, vegans, "occupy" people, hairy feminists, eco-warriors, punks, goths, nerds, socialists, anarchists. There are loads of people who will pride themselves on not having a diamond. There are people who don't fit in these common moulds.
Of all the groups of people you listed, it's interesting that only feminists are described with an adjective (and 'hairy' at that).