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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

#101

Post by lostlogin »

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.

> Really puts into perspective how exploitative De Beers is.

Another reading is that Botswana has a small economy.

It has been growing fast for a while, but has a heavy reliance on mining gemstones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botswana

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

#102

Post by msisk6 »

kstrauser wrote: post #57
willsmith72 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's little to no difference in quality between the two Lab grown can be way better quality. To me it was a no-brainer considering the ethical concerns, then add in the cost difference. The only argument I've heard for natural is "I like the imperfections". Sounds like brainwashing to me. They're chemically identical The mining industry should die

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…

I've never been that interested in gemstones of any sort, but my understanding (from geology classes decades ago) is that natural diamonds on the surface of the earth result from some rather exotic processes.

First, they form deep down in the mantle around 100 miles down. The only way they get up here is through rare and violent high velocity eruption events that bring mantle material up to the surface. Most are very old, too; greater than a billion years old.

I don't recall the source of the carbon they're made from, but it's certainly not any sort of organic material like coal or dinosaurs. ;)

Or I could be totally wrong. I really have no interest in these things beyond the geology behind them and it's possible the science has uncovered new stuff since I last studied them.

Likewise, I have no idea how these synthetic diamonds are being made nowadays, but I bet that's pretty cool, too.

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

#103

Post by helpfulclippy »

If we want to maintain having economic flex be an essential part of courtship lategame, let’s have new tradition should be donating two months pay to a non-profit to get some sort of well made certificate in her name.

And then if she says “yeah I want you to donate to the Enslave African Children to Plunder the Earth For Frivolous Baubles Foundation,” you know, hopefully that’s a fucking bullet the guy just dodged.

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

#104

Post by ButlerianJihad »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #64
bsoqk wrote: post #50

Earlier 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.

Well the privet to luxury was due to quartz watches taking their core business, and now Chinese superclones are in the early days of threatening their luxury business. At a certain point it’s hard to care about the residual difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet

This may have been a nerd-snipe for Harry Potter fans, but I still struggle to interpolate an acccurate word there. "pivot to luxury"?

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

#105

Post by hbarka »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #95
willsmith72 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's little to no difference in quality between the two Lab grown can be way better quality. To me it was a no-brainer considering the ethical concerns, then add in the cost difference. The only argument I've heard for natural is "I like the imperfections". Sounds like brainwashing to me. They're chemically identical The mining industry should die

Maybe the lab enshittifiers can add imperfections! Win, win!

Kintsugi diamonds!

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

#106

Post by cjbgkagh »

ButlerianJihad wrote: post #104
cjbgkagh wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the privet to luxury was due to quartz watches taking their core business, and now Chinese superclones are in the early days of threatening their luxury business. At a certain point it’s hard to care about the residual difference.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privet This may have been a nerd-snipe for Harry Potter fans, but I still struggle to interpolate an acccurate word there. "pivot to luxury"?

Yes ‘pivot’ somehow a double typo or perhaps some weird autocorrection. Sorry about that.

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

#107

Post by xbmcuser »

MobileVet wrote: post #55

This took way longer than I hoped & expected... the DeBeers cartel in full damage control has really squeezed everything they could from it.

Debeers has been trying to sell their mines for years now unsuccessfully the public might not have known but the financial people did.

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

#108

Post by asadotzler »

ninjalanternshk wrote: post #76
Loughla wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The jeweler might have a smaller selection and steeper, retail prices. Many jewelers don't deal in diamonds at all.

I mean, you're right, just ask them to set a lab-grown rock. You're not bringing in ingots of gold for the ring, after all.

Then again, even synthetic diamonds can get expensive so maybe any savings is good savings.

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

#109

Post by xbmcuser »

fhn wrote: post #98
MobileVet wrote: post #55

This took way longer than I hoped & expected... the DeBeers cartel in full damage control has really squeezed everything they could from it.

so DeBeers just buys up all the labs that grow them and still have a monopoly. Lower the price competition appears and raise the price when competition goes bankrupt. Sort of like Amazon.

The process to make diamonds is open to anyone and has a lot of industrial uses apart from jewelry so not possible for Debeers to monopolize the market they can crash the prices but increasing prices won't be possible.

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

#110

Post by Der_Einzige »

tptacek wrote: post #79
literalAardvark wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Now a days the imperfections themselves in the rings are what are valued in natural diamonds.

People from India, thailand, Myanmar etc have not and probably won’t for a very long time abandon a strong preference for natural diamonds, regardless of how much “better” the lab grown ones are.

This is a textbook case of “worse is better”.

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