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South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

wsj.com

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Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#41

Post by bookofjoe »

jonstewart wrote: post #39
hedora wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern beef is unhealthy for humans due to grazing conditions. Maybe the lab grown stuff will be closer to conventional farming output.

Hopefully most people here getting ribeyes aren’t getting them from the same factory farms that supply McDonald’s and sell other cheap kinds of beef. A ribeye is an occasional luxury and best bought from the farmer.

>... best bought from the farmer.

Perhaps you're anticipating this:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/sep/4/trump-allows...

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#43

Post by bluefirebrand »

moate wrote: post #29
wonderwonder wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree, as long as it's meat. Lab grown meat from cells is meat. The reason impossible never worked was becuase it wasn't meat. Very few people are going to trade meat for soy and vegetables

IDK what "never worked" means here, the market cap for Impossible/Beyond alone is still over a billion dollars. You can still get an Impossible Whopper at any Burger King in the US. There's plenty of issues with selling meat alternatives, I don't think you're the person to speak to them for some reason...

According to Google AI "The global beef industry has a total market value of approximately $465 billion to $526 billion"

Impossible/Beyond barely exists in comparison

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#44

Post by aaron695 »

hedora wrote: post #22
missedthecue wrote: post #18

Brutal news for Botswana which was really breaking new ground in raising Sub Saharan living standards. 30% of their GDP and a huge portion of government revenues are diamond exports. And they had gotten to 100% formalized and child labor free supply lines

The did away with child slavery in the mines, but severely exploited female adults instead: https://www.freedomunited.org/news/botswana-diamonds-ugly-tr... Things like marital rape are still legal there.

[dead]

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#45

Post by nkrisc »

wonderwonder wrote: post #13
SoftTalker wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we can replace the taste, appearance, and texture of a medium-rare rib eye with lab grown meat at a substantially cheaper price, we will.

Agree, as long as it's meat. Lab grown meat from cells is meat. The reason impossible never worked was becuase it wasn't meat. Very few people are going to trade meat for soy and vegetables

Even though I do eat meat I still enjoy black bean burger patties far more than Impossible because a black bean patty is tasty in its own way and not trying to replicate meat.

A black bean patty or similar is a tasty bit of food that works well in a burger form.

I like meat but not every meal I eat needs to have meat in it. Give me tasty (and cheaper) alternatives to meat and I’ll eat them in place of meat sometimes.

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#46

Post by colingauvin »

hedora wrote: post #22
missedthecue wrote: post #18

Brutal news for Botswana which was really breaking new ground in raising Sub Saharan living standards. 30% of their GDP and a huge portion of government revenues are diamond exports. And they had gotten to 100% formalized and child labor free supply lines

The did away with child slavery in the mines, but severely exploited female adults instead: https://www.freedomunited.org/news/botswana-diamonds-ugly-tr... Things like marital rape are still legal there.

I'm not trying to read your comment as whataboutism, but it did get me wondering: From a moral or ethical standpoint, if there is a gradient route from "very immoral to moral", but it involves first going from "very immoral" to just plain old regular immoral - do we view it as an improvement or a deficiency? Is there a route that involves going from very immoral to moral in one direct step?

For example, exploitation is bad, but child exploitation is worse. So moving from just child exploitation to adult exploitation is a positive move that still results in an abhorrent status quo. On the other hand I can't think of an example where we went from child exploitation --> no exploitation of any kind...

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#47

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

SoftTalker wrote: post #10
reid-rigo wrote: post #6

Hope to see these headlines some day for the meat industry

If we can replace the taste, appearance, and texture of a medium-rare rib eye with lab grown meat at a substantially cheaper price, we will.

True, but it's also the case that in some places and subcultures we're already at a point where meat with certain qualifications in some contexts is a Veblen good, and the rhetoric around it is very much a quasi-mystical blend of notions of purity and vitalism (see e.g. paleo/primal/ancestral diet influencers). That edge, almost by definition, can't be produced in a lab, and if we were really being purely rational/utilitarian about these things, I doubt we'd be eating as much meat as we are today.

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#48

Post by hn_submit »

The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks.

They wanted to differentiate between natural and lab-grown versions with the former being much more expensive. But that train has left the station since there's little to no difference in quality between the two. In fact, I once predicted there'd be huge scams where lab-grown ones would be repackaged and sold as natural ones and that would ruin customers' trust in natural diamonds.

But it now seems that isn't going to happen because customers are voting with their feet and leaving natural diamonds behind.

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#49

Post by missedthecue »

bastawhiz wrote: post #33
missedthecue wrote: post #18

Brutal news for Botswana which was really breaking new ground in raising Sub Saharan living standards. 30% of their GDP and a huge portion of government revenues are diamond exports. And they had gotten to 100% formalized and child labor free supply lines

Botswana's diamond mining industry is exactly one company: Debswana, a 50/50 joint venture between the government of Botswana and De Beers. Which means, when you think about it, that half of one subsidiary of De Beers is effectively producing ~one third of Botswana's GDP. Really puts into perspective how exploitative De Beers is.

This is a difficult conclusion to draw given that the implied counterfactual is the assumption that Botswana could have had similar results sans De Beers. I don't think that's at all obvious. If my problem was that I had raw diamonds a few hundred meters underground and wanted to turn them into dollars, I'd probably call the preeminent experts on mining, refining, and marketing diamonds as well.

The venture began in 1969 and as difficult as the economic situation there is now, subsaharan africa was an even worse place then. So I think your counterfactual needs put into perspective. Additionally in 2013, the state created the 100% owned Okavango Diamond Company to export diamonds using the institutional knowledge they'd gathered over the decades.

Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones

#50

Post by bsoqk »

hn_submit wrote: post #48

The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. They wanted to differentiate between natural and lab-grown versions with the former being much more expensive. But that train has left the station since there's little to no difference in quality between the two. In fact, I once predicted there'd be huge scams where lab-grown ones would be repackaged and sold a…

> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks.

Just like the luxury watches market ceased to exist when you could buy quartz watches for 10 bucks.

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