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De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

money.cnn.com

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Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#261

Post by dalbasal »

jarito wrote: post #125
1024core wrote: post #98

THIS IS NOT ABOUT MAN-MADE DIAMONDS! Read this article: https://www.thestar.com/business/2018/05/29/de-beers-to-sell... Read the last paragraph: The move also comes at a sensitive time for De Beers and its relationship with Botswana, the source of three-quarters of its diamonds. The two have a sales agreement that gives De Beers the right to market and sell the diamonds from Botswana. The deal, which gives De Beers i…

Good? If the acceptable price paid for diamonds in both the wholesale and retail markets is lowered, then the pressure to mine diamonds (and the attendant violence & natural damage) should be lowered as well. That seems like a good outcome? Additionally, DeBeers is unlikely to be able to dominate the lab-grown market so this step should legitimize lab-grown stones with little risk of creating another monopoly.

I wouldn't jump to any such conclusions.

De Beers has spent the last 100+ years controlling the diamond industry's economics in it's entirety, from mining (via such contracts) to retail. They even invented the diamond engagement ring tradition, as we know it today. De Beers are most active on the wholesale side, where they control supply (and when they can, demand) to maintain stable, high "prices."

...That's why they are/control a cartel. I have no doubt that de beers does not intend to enter this market so that they can compete in an "efficient" level playing field. That's not what they do. They want to exert control over one or both of these markets, in some way. That is always the de beers business plan.

Anyway... I always get a little worried when people apply the basics of supply-demand logic everywhere. Classical economics describes markets of a certain type: many buyers and sellers, reasonable transparency & information flow, not too much collusion, reasonably low transaction costs, mild psychology/cultural effects..... This is some fraction of the economy but not all.

Supply-demand is not the main thing determining outcomes (prices & volume) in a lot of big markets: labour, financial services, banking, oil, ISPs... diamonds. Supply and demand effect those markets, but not in a way that can be described by 2 intersecting curves.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#262

Post by m-app »

kbenson wrote: post #207
nsp wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe “Have you ever tried to sell a diamond” (1982) https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-yo... is what you’re thinking of - it’s a great article and feel ahead of its time in style/composition.

I saw that, and it could be, but I have a (possibly false) memory of some orange-ish toned world map which showed the locations of major diamond exporters and the times they started exporting. Or maybe it was blue-ish? I think I've reached the point in trying to remember this where any additional details I might think I remember are more likely just cross-contamination of memories. :/

Could it be this one from 2013? http://blog.priceonomics.com/post/45768546804/diamonds-are-b...

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#263

Post by rudimental »

remarkEon wrote: post #74
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

Interestingly enough, this starts to bring up questions that have previously only been super active in science fiction circles, particularly, Star Trek: If you can perfectly recreate something down to the molecular level, what actually has value? (Assuming, someday, that synthetic versions are excessively cheap, in Star Trek's case.) If you can replicate cooked food perfectly, will people still claim that "real" food…

I think this theme was first explored in depth in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep . Having a "real" animal was a status symbol.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is great. Walter Benjamin explored some related ideas in essay form in 1935, link below. There's probably some Platonic dialogues about related topics 2,300 years before both though.

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

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#264

Post by Iv »

adrianratnapala wrote: post #110
Iv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly enough, the way to differentiate man-made from natural diamonds is to look for flaws and impurities: man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless. If you want a natural stone that is "forever", look into the nature shop, they have tons of beautiful solid stones. If you want a shiny, pure gem stone, lab-grown is going to give the best quality. Natural diamonds are hopefully becoming a…

> man-made diamonds are much more likely to be purer and flawless. Hmm, both natural and man-made stones have price/quality trade-offs. I am no expert in the field, but I think both kinds are post-sorted into quality grades based on what flaws are found. And I guess labs can also tune their growth parameters for different trade-offs. So yes, for a given price and size, the artificial stone will have better quality --…

I only read about it something like 10 years ago, when lab-grown started to appear, and they already had the problem of being too pure. Making diamonds with impurities seems to be more costly than making them pure.

What may fool your intuition is that the process is not about refining, it is about growing a crystal. IIRC, the vaporize carbon in a very controlled atmosphere and let it grow.

Natural processes are much more messy and are made in the presence of a lot of other chemicals that need to be artificially introduced in the crystal growing atmosphere for it to be integrated.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#266

Post by solatic »

ISL wrote: post #71
fgonzag wrote: post #10

"Lightbox will transform the lab-grown diamond sector by offering consumers a lab-grown product they have told us they want but aren't getting: affordable fashion jewelry that may not be forever, but is perfect for right now" This is clearly a play to devalue the image of man made diamonds. "May not be forever" my ass, it's the exact same thing. Their goal is probably to try to quickly drive the price of man made dia…

I'd love for synthetic diamond to bring the price down on gemstones. A lot of people are engaged in arduous and risky work to produce natural stones. The environmental costs, too, are real. Modern high-quality synthetic materials, whether in gemstones or other uses, have so much to offer in fashion innovation. Indeed, diamond jewelers claim that silicon carbide (SiC) has "excess fire" as it has greater dispersion tha…

> The real beauty of many stones is in the cut, not the base material.

If you can create the exact same rough/uncut synthetic diamond, and therefore can deterministically reproduce the same cut on each diamond, then the decision of how to cut that diamond becomes intellectual property and is potentially copywritable.

If de Beers really can't hold back the synthetic market, they'll find a way to take it over, and legally-enforced monopolies sure isn't a bad strategy.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#267

Post by dragonwriter »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #146
SquareWheel wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the kind of misinformation being described above. Why would "traditional" crops going through random mutations be any safer than GMO crops going through highly controlled, highly tested mutations? It isn't a mysterious process - it's science. It allows us to create products like Golden Rice to alleviate malnutrition and increase crop yields. It's probably the only thing which has helped curtail world…

Breeding over time is slow. When you select crops over generations to improve a seed stock you are not making radical changes quickly, and you are not introducing genes from other species. It is the pace of change and the scope of change that makes GMO crops more dangerous than those we have modified over 1000s of years of selective breeding. And BTW, even in natural selection, there can be instances where a naturall…

> When you select crops over generations to improve a seed stock you are not making radical changes quickly

You are with modern non-GMO, mutagen-accelerated breeding methods.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#268

Post by kbenson »

John_KZ wrote: post #258
colanderman wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I've seen lots of marketing spam on my elevator's "Captivate" box "educating" viewers on colored diamonds and how "natural" impurities make them that way. Very obvious ploy to increase the desirability of mined diamonds.

Well, the whole point of diamonds is to show off wealth. Natural diamonds and their defects are more expensive and very hard to replicate crystallographically , so they're not doing anything unexpected.

But they are more expensive in many cases because of artificially reduced supply, not because of actual rarity. Now, for a whole bunch of people that makes absolutely no difference (if anyone needs evidence, look at the Birkin Bag, which NPR's Planet Money covered well), but for others it does.

In this case the market needs the average consumer to buy into that status symbol, and enough of them are price conscious that a cheaper alternative that almost nobody can tell is cheaper is quite a draw.

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#269

Post by GordonS »

Tyr42 wrote: post #171
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #11

Interestingly enough, this starts to bring up questions that have previously only been super active in science fiction circles, particularly, Star Trek: If you can perfectly recreate something down to the molecular level, what actually has value? (Assuming, someday, that synthetic versions are excessively cheap, in Star Trek's case.) If you can replicate cooked food perfectly, will people still claim that "real" food…

Compare synthetic vanilla flavouring vs plant based. Same molecule, but big price difference.

Something is different though - vanilla flavouring doesn't taste nearly as good as real vanilla. I guess the vanilla contains a spectrum of substance, whereas the flavouring only contains the main one?

Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds

#270

Post by menzoic »

Vektorweg wrote: post #241
nradov wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never mind about jewelry and fashion. Cheap synthetic diamonds would open up a host of industrial applications. Bring on "The Diamond Age".

Industrial synthetic diamond production is around since at least the 80s and from all we know about De Beers, they are certainly not trying to get the price down.

> The brand, called Lightbox, will offer synthetic diamonds at a fraction of the price it charges for stones pulled out of the earth.
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