Diamonds are a good tool.... Not so much a good jewelry
Diamonds Suck
131–140 of 171 posts
Re: Diamonds Suck
#132I, as a European, cannot fathom how anyone would spend a significant amount of money on an engagement ring! The engagement rings we got ourselves cost 18$ and were made from wood. After all, they only need to last a few months, or maybe 1-2 years, until the wedding. Regarding the wedding ring, I can understand slightly better how someone would put a bit more money into that, considering that you wear it for life. But…
Just a friendly reminder: if you decide to combine carbon fiber with any of those metals, avoid diving at extreme depths. This could be catastrophic.
Re: Diamonds Suck
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't even have to wear rings.
Agreed but it's still perceived as a property tag. Anyone trying to hook up will look for a ring as part of the non-verbal social clues. Rings being expensive or not is a different matter.
If you need to be marked as owned to not cheat, the marriage is probably not going to work anyway...
Re: Diamonds Suck
#134My favorite quote by someone on a forum a decade or two ago:
> Man-made diamonds are forged from the will and brilliance of man.
> Millions of years of loving relationship have lead up this point and have been distilled into 2 carats of sparkling magic,
> brought forth from the ether of the universe by man's desire to express his love.
>
> Or you could dig up some dirty rock from the ground, like an animal would do.
Re: Diamonds Suck
#135This person either doesn't get laid, has an atypical understanding partner, or no partner at all.
While DeBeers and Madison Ave. crafted a tradition to artificially inflate the value of this specific gem, create a monopoly cartel around it, and established it as a material standard of love and "suitability" for marriage, it's been subsumed by culture as much as children demand Christmas such that the odds of escaping this manufactured foolishness are scant. For example, what % of women would date a man if they heard he was a Cornell grad vs. a self-employed electrician?
The individual has a Hobson choice to either follow a convention, pretend to follow it, or ignore it altogether. Without being subject to these peer pressures, I would prefer to allocate to coin to investments and reducing debt, and instead carve a ring from a wax blank to be cast in a metal like platinum or silver.
The non-salaried working man trying to enter marriage with the demands of a large wedding party and an expensive diamond ring bought on credit would be economically foot-gunning themselves. It still happens everyday and keeps the diamond business in business.
Re: Diamonds Suck
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed but it's still perceived as a property tag. Anyone trying to hook up will look for a ring as part of the non-verbal social clues. Rings being expensive or not is a different matter.
I don't think anyone is pulling the brake at the sight of a ring.
Lots of people do, including myself.
Re: Diamonds Suck
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed but it's still perceived as a property tag. Anyone trying to hook up will look for a ring as part of the non-verbal social clues. Rings being expensive or not is a different matter.
If you need to be marked as owned to not cheat, the marriage is probably not going to work anyway...
It's not about stopping someone from cheating, it's about a social display of a big part of your life. For the same reason people get married - it's just a social display. For women it can have the added bonus of stopping men from approaching them so much
Re: Diamonds Suck
#138I have an even cheaper solution: just don't buy a ring. It all depends on what your partner wants obviously. If it's important for your partner to get a diamond ring and you value your partnership more than the cost of a diamond, then buy a diamond. If your partner wants a "I'm married" sign (as my wife did), just buy a simple wedding ring without a stone. If it's not that important for her, don't buy a ring.
Madison Avenue created a cultural Hobson choice ritual that equated the size and value of a particular precious stone with the dominant partner's love and economic suitability for marriage. The pressures on Western individuals to follow this script varies, but is still significant.
Another interesting approach is to reframe it as a Hobson choice with opportunity cost: Would you prefer a modest ring that's exciting for all of a week and is easy to lose, or a lifetime of memories of 3 weeks on a languid, secluded tropical island with surreal, warm white sand and ocean-to-plate candlelight dinners?
Re: Diamonds Suck
#139Me and my fiance read this some years back. I ended up getting her a massionite ring and she absolutely wows everyone with it. And it was less than a grand. Even people wealthier than me get impressed because the diamond industry is indeed a cartel with vastly over-priced costs.
In any case. She's extremely happy. I'm happy. My wallet is happy. It's honestly the best decision.
Re: Diamonds Suck
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd argue that signalling honed by eons of evolution is significantly different to signaling dictated by fashion, it has evolutionary purpose, and it may be costly. Fashion is fickle and can change quickly. Diamonds weren't really fashionable until De Beers started its Diamonds are Forever campaign decades ago; same with jeans, they didn't become a fashion statement until the 1950s when James Dean, Marlon Brando et a…
The seriously rich and powerful valued diamonds well before that marketing campaign (just look at the Imperial State Crown). Btw., your reaction to a rolex suggests that you are not an intended recipient anyway.
You're right, clearly I'm not the intended recipient. Leaving my fashion comments aside, my other principal objection is paying for something that likely has a 1000%+ markup on its manufacturing costs, one pays for the Rolex name-not the product.
I'm not saying the watch isn't engineered with precision as clearly it is, but one knows something is wrong when Rolex guards its manufacturing processes the way of state secrets (no one outside the company can gain access to its plant). Of course, Rolex claims this is to protect it from industrial espionage, I'd equally argue that its highly automated precision numerical control equipment can turn watches out like sausages and the company's ongoing worry is that the world will discover how cheap they are to make. That would be a marketing and PR stuff-up par excellence.
I would not buy a Rolex because I know I'd been ripped off. BTW, my grandfather was a watchmaker and jeweler and he taught me to be aware that much of the trade was build on illusion and mirrors. He didn't just repair watches, he had a precision watchmaker's lathe and similar equipment and could make parts, gears, subsections of Incabloc shock protection systems, etc. for watches and clocks that weren't available in suppliers' spares catalogs. He not only repaired jewellery but also made it. I have a gold and platinum tie pin with a black opal made by him (mind you, I wouldn't be seen dead wearing it).
Right, not only have the rich and powerful always valued diamonds but also most who've come in contact with them and other precious stones have always done so. But it was only in the 20th Century, and then mainly in anglophone countries, that diamond ownership took off among us commoners as a result of cleaver marketing.