Hope to see these headlines some day for the meat industry
the demand for diamonds is artificial, the demand for meat is very much organic. the only thing stopping most people from consuming more of it is the cost -- driven by demand.
South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
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Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#72The 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…
there goes their veblen goods...
Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#73Hope to see these headlines some day for the meat industry
A better target would be the oil and gas industry. When you look at this diamond situation it looks like in approximately one generation, demand for natural diamonds dropped low enough that the effort to mine new diamonds became uneconomical.
This happened because the ease of obtaining lab-grown diamonds that could be much higher quality, made lab-grown diamonds more attractive because buyers, who may already have been squeezed by other unfavorable economic realities found no reason to purchase natural diamonds at a higher price point.
If we could see a shift like that in energy source preference from one generation then perhaps we could destroy the incentive to produce more oil and gas or make it so uneconomical for use a motor vehicle fuel that it became a specialty product that was produced only to supply a niche product line.
We have a similar opportunity now with electric vehicles, solar panels, battery storage, etc that we can make a large dent in the volume of crude oil and natural gas required to power our economies. Developing nations have an advantage in a way because they have less legacy infrastructure to support that requires oil and gas. They can adopt the new big thing and just roll with that saving their citizens lots of money and environmental consequences associated with use of hydrocarbons fuels.
More than 35 years in the oil and gas industry. This is what I learned.
We should invest in developing nations to bring them up to speed with best available technologies. If we waste too much time we will see continents like Africa with 56 (?) nations become a flash-point for the next round of resource wars (oil and gas conflicts) that will be pushed on them by foreign operators attempting to make as much of the O&G money as possible before the world gets the message and abandons their destructive products permanently. We are already seeing some of this today. Millions of lives are in the crossfire. We have an opportunity to make a difference and we should take it. Old and young in developed nations should adopt next-gen tech ASAP so that kill these dino-corps before they kill too many more of us.
Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
I personally find lab grown much more beautiful, in that they’re an amazing accomplishment of mankind’s science and technology. So a tree got squeezed underground until it turned into a crystal? Cool, I guess, but big deal. Humans learned enough about how matter works to recreate those conditions at industrial scale? That’s amazing! I’d much rather wear a monument to our cleverness than a dinosaur mashed under a rock…
This is a more honest and realistic take than most on the thread. Note that either way it's the provenance behind the gem that you find attractive, much more than any instantaneous quality of it like chemistry, lack/presence of defects, etc. It's the story.
It’s not only that. Lab diamonds are superior in every way I’ve heard of. The emotional appeal of their provenance is the sole remaining reason I’ve heard people claim that slave diamonds are superior. I contend that they’re worse there, too. In fact, the only reason I can imagine someone preferring mined diamonds is that they genuinely value the human suffering that goes into them.
Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I would describe it at showing how poor/unproductive the rest of Botswana's economy is. Or is the theory here that De Beers somehow keeps the part of the Botswanian economy they don't participate in poor/unproductive?
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Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#76So lab grown diamonds are good and cheap enough I can finally buy my wife of 21 years a diamond ring?
Yes. And there are a ton of companies that sell just loose stones, so you can take it to a locally owned shop for the ring and setting, thereby keeping more of the money in your own community.
Not to be this way but can you not go to a local jeweler and buy a ring with a lab-grown diamond in it, no assembly required?
Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Except in this case, the quartz watches would be better quality than the luxury watches I'm not sure your analogy has teeth.
The quartz watches are (way) better at time keeping.
And the rest is just a matter of paying for luxury.
The main reason the analogy doesn't really help is that the mechanical watch market absolutely cratered, and it's only being propped up by enthusiasts of cool machines.
Diamonds can't really have that. They've already scammed the general population into using slave diamonds at monopoly prices for 30 years longer than they needed to, but no one is _passionate_ about slave diamonds.
Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#78Hope to see these headlines some day for the meat industry
There are a number of efforts to grow vat grown protein. That's producing food without plants even.
Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except in this case, the quartz watches would be better quality than the luxury watches I'm not sure your analogy has teeth.
The quartz watches are (way) better at time keeping. And the rest is just a matter of paying for luxury. The main reason the analogy doesn't really help is that the mechanical watch market absolutely cratered, and it's only being propped up by enthusiasts of cool machines. Diamonds can't really have that. They've already scammed the general population into using slave diamonds at monopoly prices for 30 years longer t…
It's a poor analogy because mechanical watches and quartz watches aren't perfect substitutes and aren't purchased for the same reasons. Everybody's phone keeps better time than a watch; absolute accuracy isn't the exclusive measure.
Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products.
Re: South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> The venture began in 1969 and as difficult as the economic situation there is now, subsaharan africa was an even worse place then.
False. The sixties were one of the better decades (economically) in sub Saharan Africa. The region was richer than much of Asia, with the exception of a few places like Congo and Ghana.
> the assumption that Botswana could have had similar results sans De Beers.
De Beers was created by Cecil Rhodes, who essentially guided the British to establish the Bechuanaland Protectorate. The British economically ravaged the area and left it one of the poorest places on the planet. It's wild to say they wouldn't have done it without De Beers when they were essentially guaranteed they couldn't do it without De Beers by the guy who founded De Beers, literally less than a century before Debswana was created.
Anything in the 21st century doesn't change the fact that one private entity has extracted more value from a desperate country than they deserve for decades. Had the British, I don't know, left Botswana with such luxuries as "paved roads" maybe they would have had more economic leverage in 1969.