201–210 of 239 posts
The Russians just announced that they have a huge amount of quality diamonds on their territory in some site that they haven't started exploiting yet. To profit they basically have to ape De Beers and create a huge demand in Europe or Asia (I think diamond engagement rings are that big only in the USA)
Most of the article seems critical of the diamond industry. Have they not done people a service by providing them with a nice product that they can enjoy? There are certainly moral problems with how they built their empire, but why are clever marketing and aggressive pricing bad things? The former is simply how you tell people about new products. Remember diamonds went from being owned by almost no one to being owned…
Most of the article seems critical of the diamond industry. Have they not done people a service by providing them with a nice product that they can enjoy? There are certainly moral problems with how they built their empire, but why are clever marketing and aggressive pricing bad things? The former is simply how you tell people about new products. Remember diamonds went from being owned by almost no one to being owned…
It's bad because it's a vertical cartel, from mining to distribution. Cartels are illegal in that it limits the free market using artificial price controls. It's the artificial price controls that are illegal. Apple faces competition from Android, RIM and Win8. DeBeers diamonds do not face any competition from any other diamond producer because they spent 50 years establishing their network for "gem" quality diamonds…
Further, DeBeers must face the same competition that Apple faces. In these comments, we see lots of people looking at other gemstones (sapphires, etc) in place of diamonds. The other gemstone producers compete with DeBeers in the same way that other smartphone producers compete with Apple.
I'm not sure it's helpful to reason from the fact that something is illegal to why it is wrong. Sort of like the joke about the three storekeepers in jail: The first charged higher prices than everyone else and was convicted of price gouging. The second charged lower prices than everyone else and was convicted of dumping and cutthroat competition. The third charged the same prices as everyone else and was convicted of collusion. Laws will be made against all kinds of things, and there are many incentives (e.g. law firms revenue) to make laws against very profitable enterprises.
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P.S. If you understand the thing she is trying to buy, you don't have to sell her a ring at all. There turns out to be an arbitrage opportunity in social status for, say, middle or upper-middle class Japanese women. Anybody can buy rocks, but nobody can buy a man vacation, so a man who demonstrates ability to take long vacations must be able to buy virtually unlimited amounts of rocks. Regardless of whether I can aff…
Brilliant example. There's another social signal that's relevant across cultures regarding wedding rings: the design of the setting. The complexity and attractiveness of how the stones are set is what people notice, above and beyond the stones themselves. (The only thing people tend to notice about the stones is the size and quantity.) My wife wears a moissanite ring, which she loves. The deciding factor was that we…
This isn't to say that you're not right on from a signaling standpoint, just that if you think you might have the need to resell the ring in the future (or perhaps borrow against it), you're better off getting a better stone than a fancier setting.
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Interesting: how can a belief ever be a rational decision? Isn't it irrational by definition?
All things you think you know are ultimately founded on axioms, beliefs. Why do you trust sense-data to be real? Brains in vats, holosuites, yada-yada ...
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In that case, though, the UI and details actually create a different user experience. As a professional software engineer, I like to think that I "know better" on various criteria. I've used Android phones and while they are fine enough, the UI feels a little 'off' and the responsiveness is lower. It's enough to make a real, subjective difference.
The point is, most consumer buy without knowing any of that, or even trying the phone out.
You might want to think different (sic) about that for a moment, given that there are hundreds of millions of iOS devices out there in use right now.
Virtually everyone who can afford an iPhone either has one already, or has at least tried one out a bit.
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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).
(Pedantically, I could claim we are all feminists, after all, nearly everyone here thinks women should be able to vote. But that wasn't the meaning I had in mind initally)
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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 carte…
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Brilliant example. There's another social signal that's relevant across cultures regarding wedding rings: the design of the setting. The complexity and attractiveness of how the stones are set is what people notice, above and beyond the stones themselves. (The only thing people tend to notice about the stones is the size and quantity.) My wife wears a moissanite ring, which she loves. The deciding factor was that we…
Unfortunately, if you do ever want to sell, the setting is essentially worthless. Almost all of the cost of the setting is in the labor, and, as the article explains, those who buy "used" jewelry are almost certainly going to part it out and melt it down. (That is, unless you're talking about really high end estate jewelery.) So, for the $3-10k you'll spend for a nice setting, you'll probably get back 20-50% of the p…