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Diamonds Are Bullshit

blog.priceonomics.com

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Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#761

Post by davidroberts »

cafard wrote: post #574
triplesec wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

csallen, thank you for thinking of making a list! I do have one or two more reasons to add to your list. 1. Cognitive dissonance reduction: he spent so much, so to avoid cognitive dissonance he's going to tell himself she's worth it. Helps keep marriages together. It is the same reason that hazing ritual happen in college and why secret societies have all sorts of strange initiation rituals, often hazardous or diffic…

An anecdotal data point: a friend used to work with a man who had married right out of high school, as had most of his classmates. At that point, probably 15 or 20 years out, this marriage was one of the few still intact. The man's observation was that in this group, the length of marriage was inversely proportional to the cost of the wedding.

Another anecdotal data point: When I married, I was working as a low-level reporter for near minimum wage. We married at a city courthouse and had a reception in the living room with my housemates who happened to be home at the time. I didn't buy a rock of any sort, though I gave her a plain gold wedding band I got from an estate sale. She gave me one she bought for $70 at a jewelry store.

That happened thirty years ago and we are still happily married with three kids, two of them in college right now and one in high school.

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#762

Post by transitionality »

chenster wrote: post #485

Everyone wants an iPHone, iPad, i-this, that, and most of them really don't have any use of it. Is that a bullshit too, I suppose? Or marketing is the bullshit?

It's true that most iPhone purchases are due to marketing, but an iPhone delivers exactly what is promised. A diamond doesn't. Diamonds are neither particularly rare, nor last forever, nor a good investment, nor a part of any organic tradition.

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#763

Post by transitionality »

fatjokes wrote: post #346

Articles like this are bullshit. Not in the sense that they're untrue, but in the sense it won't change a thing. Men buy diamonds because women want them. Women want them to show off to other women.

Nothing changes overnight, but there's already informed resistance to De Beers' marketing in a significant fraction Generation Y adults. Things will only get better. In the age of the Internet, you can't maintain a Big Lie in the long term.

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#764

Post by transitionality »

webmonkeyuk wrote: post #556

I think the author of the article is way off the mark. An engagement ring isn't any kind of a financial investment (unless you think the wedding's unlikely to happen and you want to sell the ring/diamond). It's a token of committment/love.

Why spend thousands on a mere token if the only value is one of sentimental association?

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#765

Post by learc83 »

transitionality wrote: post #742
learc83 wrote: post #737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get a ring appraised you can walk into a jewelry store and pay $100 without the person who bought the diamond knowing about it . That is simply not possible to do with a bank statement, there is no equivalent easy to use affordable service.

Of course it's possible. Private detectives can procure an insane amount of information on anyone, often using quasi-legal means like social engineering of the target or "favors" from friends on the police force. Given equivalent conditions, the two tasks are equally easy.

>there is no equivalent easy to use affordable service.

Hiring a PI to investigate someone is no where near as easy and affordable as dropping off a ring at a jeweler.

A jeweler can appraise a ring in less than an hour for less than $100, a PI will want at least a $500 retainer.

In addition a your average PI is going to have a hard time getting bank account information. His buddy in the police can't get that information without a court order.

>quasi-legal means like social engineering

There is no quasi-legal about it. It is explicitly illegal. And it's going to cost you a hell of a lot more than $100 to get a PI to risk jail time for you.

The only way for a PI to get someone's bank account information is by either pretending to be the person, or knowing someone on the inside. Either way is illegal and could be a huge problem for you if you hired someone to do it. (there are ways to do it legally, there could be public record from old civil proceedings, but that wouldn't tell you the current balance)

Appraising a ring without the giver's knowledge:

1. Drop off ring at jeweler

2. Pay $100

3. Pick up ring the next day

Determining the validity of a bank account without the owner's knowledge:

1. Make appointment with PI

2. Discuss specifics of case with PI

3. PI says he can't take the case because what you're asking is illegal

4. Repeat steps 1, and 2 until you find a PI who will accept

5. Pay PI huge retainer.

6. Wait 2 weeks, and hope law enforcement doesn't find out that you hired someone to break the law for you

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#766

Post by namenotrequired »

GFischer wrote: post #753
namenotrequired wrote: post #515

This brought an interesting discussion with my girlfriend - turns out where she is from (Brazil) they don't do diamonds in wedding rings. One less thing to stress about in the future!

I live in Uruguay, and wedding rings here (and in Argentina, and I guess Brazil too) are usually gold or gold-plated, without diamonds.

Yeah, that's what she told me too :)

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#767

Post by pbhjpbhj »

jessaustin wrote: post #627
mgcross wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why everyone assumed "hard times" as referring to the marriage... I interpreted it as hard financial times, even in a good marriage.

Although it's at least implied in most vows, many people can't imagine a marriage surviving hard financial times.

Do you mean that you feel many people respond to financial problems by splitting up. Doesn't that exacerbate their financial problems, at least short term, and - if there are no other issues - dispose of many benefits in the process?

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#768

Post by n09n »

darkarmani wrote: post #732
n09n wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care what the respect is based on? What differentiates "superficial" respect from genuine respect? I guarantee you the criteria you use to judge people look equally ridiculous to other people too.

Are you from debeers or did are you someone who bought a huge rock for their wife? > What differentiates "superficial" respect from genuine respect? This question is quite telling.

Do you honestly believe that you are so obviously correct, anyone who disagrees with you must only be doing it because they are financially invested in presenting that way?

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#769

Post by n09n »

scarmig wrote: post #724
n09n wrote: post #712

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you care what the respect is based on? What differentiates "superficial" respect from genuine respect? I guarantee you the criteria you use to judge people look equally ridiculous to other people too.

What's your point, exactly? Slaveholders and abolitionists certainly chose to respect different people in the 19th century. That doesn't change the fact that slaveholders who judged people based on how large their plantation was were horrible people not worthy of our respect. And to drive the point home: those diamonds you see in rings have a non-negligible chance of coming from child slaves, who have been torn from…

The point is not about who you should or should not respect. The point is that other people are going to respect certain aspects in people that you don't agree with, and it's silly to say that respect is not real just because you don't agree with its motivations. It's the same reason we don't like c# developers who say that python devs aren't real programmers.

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#770

Post by taejo »

mullingitover wrote: post #671
taejo wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but eventually had to settle for a natural one which wasn't sourced from Africa Because Africa is all one big war zone. Because any money sent to Africa funds violence. Seriously? Why is it so much better to buy from Russia than South Africa or Botswana? (the money's all going to De Beers -- which was originally a South African company -- or a similar multinational anyway). The top four diamond-producing countries…

The problem with buying diamonds from anywhere is that you're giving conflict diamonds added value through the simple fact of your demand for them. They're a fungible commodity. Essentially there is no diamond that is not a blood diamond.

Absolutely. Buying Canadian/Russian/Indian diamonds doesn't help.

Hmm, actually, they aren't perfectly fungible. 100 one-carat diamonds aren't worth the same as one 100-carat diamond, and even diamonds of the same weight aren't substitutable. But with respect to country of origin, yeah.

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