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Diamonds Are Bullshit

blog.priceonomics.com

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Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#261

Post by revelation »

stephengillie wrote: post #247
maratd wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so they just leave De Beers to run around gouging consumers That's kind of missing the point. If diamonds were 5 bucks a piece, women would no longer be interested in receiving rings bejeweled by them. A woman wants a man who is financially secure. If you can't afford a shiny rock, you can't afford what's coming after it either, so there's no point.

Women can't use another proxy to signal financial security, like the dollar amount in a bank account, or a house down-payment, or a secure job? Women can't talk for themselves? Do women still want a man who is financially secure? What about independent women? How many women have posted in this thread (compared to HN's overall male-female posting ratio)?

You can argue that the diamond market was mischaracterized here, but right now you're arguing a strawman.

(Scroll down for more reporting on how the liberal view and equality mindset might currently clash with reality; the explosion of this comment thread is more evidence of the same phenomena)

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#262

Post by rayiner »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #241
rayiner wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adoption. The IQ of children is highly correlated with the IQ of parents. Adoption is not, for educated couples, an alternative to having their own children. > A woman who wants to raise a baby at some point has to make tough choices about formula, breast pumping, bonding, and her other priorities in life. You can make things as equal as possible, but no more. My wife and I have almost identical educational backgro…

Ignoring whether that's true or relevant to family planning, I never said you can divide up roles randomly without ever making tradeoffs. Just that it's coercive to adhere slavishly to distributions of labor which are 1) monolithic and 2) bound to gender.

See: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/assortative-mating-regr...

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#263

Post by clicks »

rayiner wrote: post #255
clicks wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are a species where, thus far, the burdens of motherhood are associated with a single gender I agree with you here. I don't know why the HN crowd is refusing to see this point... an infant in its early months really needs the mother. But I disagree on the point that the role of motherhood inextricably falls down on a woman's turf for the years to come. As a male I can say that I would be happy to be a stay-at-home…

> But I disagree on the point that the role of motherhood inextricably falls down on a woman's turf for the years to come. As a practical matter, the latter follows the former, almost inexorably. Between the negative stigma of being pregnant at work to the negative stigma of taking maternity leave, to the negative stigma of having to be there for your young child when it is still in the "I need my mommy" stage (which…

You bring up good points.

However I wonder if many of the stigmas you mention are ingrained into society only by the persisting culture, and so one should not fear challenging them? There are many single-dads that do a wonderful job of raising kids alone as a single parent (admittedly I don't know any who started taking care of the kids below the age of 2 -- and I do accept that even 2 years is a hell of a long time).

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#264

Post by eli »

kyrra wrote: post #132

(person I know) worked for GE (General Electric) on their industrial diamond production process back in the 90's, and I got to hear lots of fun stories from this. Diamonds that are man-made[1] are stronger (fewer imperfections) than those that are mined from the earth. Because of this, industrial diamonds tend to be man-made. (for reference, industrial diamonds when cutting hard materials, such as metals). While work…

I remember reading this very good Wired article [1] ("Armed with inexpensive, mass-produced gems, two startups are launching an assault on the De Beers cartel. Next up: the computing industry.") and assuming we were on the verge of a major disruption. But that was 10 years ago. Anyone know why it didn't quite work out that way?

[1] http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#265

Post by wutbrodo »

mikeash wrote: post #182
Zimahl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Think of how men are marketed to and you'll see the difference. It's not a name brand or a lifestyle, almost everything marketed to men has some sort of pragmatic function to it. Be it the big F-150 that can tow a ton, to the comfortable (yet fuel efficient!) 4-door sedan. Sport cars might be an exception for most men (although not for me). As much as you don't need it, a $2000 60" HDTV is still more functional than…

> As much as you don't need it, a $2000 60" HDTV is still more functional than a purse that costs the same amount of money. Are you serious? Is this a joke? A purse actually serves a useful function. It doesn't serve $2000 of function, but it's useful in that it lets you carry around important items. A TV serves no useful purpose whatsoever . None. Zero. There is nothing useful in your life that the TV lets you do. I…

The purchase of the TV itself is not what's being discussed here, and frankly a bit of a strawman. As useless as it may be, a lot of households consider TV an essential item, so the question of TV marketing affecting men more has to do with _which_ television you buy, as opposed to buying a TV per se. Per Nielsen, women watch significantly more TV than men anyway[1], so talking about marketing to men in the context of _whether_ to buy a TV is pointless.

As far as the _quality_ of the TV being purchased, it seems the point that GP was making (whether I agree with his larger point or not) is that the 60" TV fills its function a lot better than the 19" one which costs a tenth of the price. By contrast, as far as I know there is no correlation to "how well a purse carries items" and its price (beyond the very very low end, of course, but far from the $2000 level). GP's point was that the price difference between a 200 and 2000 dollar purse is being spent almost entirely on brand (even the appearance is the same, when you consider off-brand purses), and the difference between a 200 and 2000 dollar TV is being spent on a VERY large difference in quality as far as functionality. This distinction between "paying for brand" and "paying for functionality" is exactly the point that GP is making about marketing.

As a thought experiment, consider what would happen if Sony started selling its current flagship $2000 TV for 20 dollars, and it was widely known and permanent. Now consider what would happen if the same happened for Louis Vuitton's flagship $2000 handbag. The perceived value of the handbag would vanish almost instantly. No one wants a status symbol that's cheap. You can't destroy _real_ consumer value (vs brand/marketing value) that easily just by dropping the price.

[1]http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/05/nielsen-gaming-tv-console/

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#266

Post by [deleted] »

clicks wrote: post #263
rayiner wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I disagree on the point that the role of motherhood inextricably falls down on a woman's turf for the years to come. As a practical matter, the latter follows the former, almost inexorably. Between the negative stigma of being pregnant at work to the negative stigma of taking maternity leave, to the negative stigma of having to be there for your young child when it is still in the "I need my mommy" stage (which…

You bring up good points. However I wonder if many of the stigmas you mention are ingrained into society only by the persisting culture, and so one should not fear challenging them? There are many single-dads that do a wonderful job of raising kids alone as a single parent (admittedly I don't know any who started taking care of the kids below the age of 2 -- and I do accept that even 2 years is a hell of a long time)…

[deleted]

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#267

Post by rayiner »

clicks wrote: post #263
rayiner wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But I disagree on the point that the role of motherhood inextricably falls down on a woman's turf for the years to come. As a practical matter, the latter follows the former, almost inexorably. Between the negative stigma of being pregnant at work to the negative stigma of taking maternity leave, to the negative stigma of having to be there for your young child when it is still in the "I need my mommy" stage (which…

You bring up good points. However I wonder if many of the stigmas you mention are ingrained into society only by the persisting culture, and so one should not fear challenging them? There are many single-dads that do a wonderful job of raising kids alone as a single parent (admittedly I don't know any who started taking care of the kids below the age of 2 -- and I do accept that even 2 years is a hell of a long time)…

I think there is a lot culture can do to help make the distribution of child-rearing responsibilities more equitable. But who wants to risk their career progression to challenge the culture?

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#268

Post by revelation »

rayiner wrote: post #115
drivebyacct2 wrote: post #17

Maybe I'm spoiled as a nerdy (and interested in nerdy) gay guy, but I pity those in this thread saying that their fiancee wouldn't listen to reason about this. It slays me that "tradition" is so important to people that they will waste such vast amounts of money and prop up such a gross, violent industry in the face of reason.

It irks me a little bit that the issue is painted as one of "reason" versus lack thereof. There is a rationality in adhering to social convention. My wife is a diamond nerd, as well as one of the most rational people you'll ever meet, and she'd explain it this way: the diamond is a test that serves various useful purposes from the perspective of the woman: 1) It demonstrates the man's ability to provide; 2) It demons…

But all this is something that we don't say in polite company, because we have fully bought into the mythologies about marriage that are in vogue at the moment: that it's just about "love" and all that matters is a mate that makes you "happy" and that it's an arrangement that is costless to enter into and exit out of.

What you so casually disregard as "mythologies of marriage" is the result of striving for equality. A hundred years ago, marriage was indeed just another economic transaction. The suitor paid the father of the girl, who was happy to have her off his hands, being of no use in succeeding him to lead the family business.

We have not yet reached equality, so alimony is still law and being pregnant a career ender. Hence we still need the economic signaling provided by diamonds.

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#269

Post by erikpukinskis »

rayiner wrote: post #262
erikpukinskis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignoring whether that's true or relevant to family planning, I never said you can divide up roles randomly without ever making tradeoffs. Just that it's coercive to adhere slavishly to distributions of labor which are 1) monolithic and 2) bound to gender.

See: http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/assortative-mating-regr...

No references to any published studies in that link.

Re: Diamonds Are Bullshit

#270

Post by wutbrodo »

cobrausn wrote: post #49

Sure, and we all know it. But from her perspective, you probably waste all kinds of time and money on other inane bullshit for yourself. So if you actually cared, you wouldn't mind spending a bit so she gets a shiny rock to wear around. Why shouldn't she get this one thing? Also, how is this any different from fashion? Both are nearly useless raw materials that have been transformed and shaped into something people w…

This is very similar to fashion in the amount of sense it makes as a consumer. The reason this is more interesting is because of how striking it is as what essentially amounts to a conman's (DeBeers et al) success story, on a gargantuan scale. On top of that, people who buy into fashion are pretty much aware of what's going on, but I'd be willing to bet that a LARGE amount of people (myself included, until ~my late teens) are unaware that so many of the "hallowed traditions" surrounding diamond rings are marketing nonsense dreamed up a few decades ago.
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