Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
301–310 of 455 posts
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
GMO are a very powerful technology. Like anything powerful, an intelligent person calls for caution. A lot of people are worrying about GMO in food because we don't have enough data about them. We are changing things that could have important biological, health and ecological impacts, but the companies producing them are not willing to test them extensively for safety during 20 years before selling them. We don't kno…
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…
Time and scale. We just had more time to check it out.
> highly tested mutations
Highly tested for being economically sound. That's all.
> It isn't a mysterious process - it's science
Nobody said it was mysterious. Read the comment again. We are not against progress. Quoting Rabelais, "science without conscience is but the ruin of the soul". The testing process needs to be improved.
> It's probably the only thing which has helped curtail world hunger in any meaningful capacity.
We already produce more food than we need. We throw a lot of it and we are fat while others are hungry. Hunger, not more than war, has never been a technological problem. It's a human problem.
And GMO sellers have no interest in solving human problems, they target economical problems.
Again, it's a matter of agenda.
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
We as humans just need to be less stupid. Srsly no one cares if a stone is real or not.
Everyone is "trying" to be less stupid. But selling my wife's diamond rings and buying cubic zirconia replicas at this point feels like a very stupid move even though I know I will net a bunch of money up front, I hear divorces are very expensive.
Personally, I just didn't even bother buying an engagement ring (or wedding ring for that matter) because it's a "tradition" that means literally absolutely nothing to me. My husband doesn't care that I don't want jewelry and he prefers to not wear a wedding ring too. So I guess we are happy being "less stupid."
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#304This would suggest that it's not easy to identify lab-grown diamonds from other diamonds.
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone is "trying" to be less stupid. But selling my wife's diamond rings and buying cubic zirconia replicas at this point feels like a very stupid move even though I know I will net a bunch of money up front, I hear divorces are very expensive.
Diamonds have little resale value because of high retail markups, on top of previous De Beers monopoly price controls. If someone paid $3000 retail for a ring, good luck getting $700 for it.
I've looked and I can't find any.
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also, the fact is that Monsanto, which has had trouble with its ethical reputation, is very adamant about GMO. So if you don't trust Monsanto for most things, you will especially not trust it to tell you the truth about the safety of its products nor about the completeness of their tests to ensure said safety.
What specifically has Monsanto done that was unethical?
When it can't do that, it sues farmers that harvest, plan and grow the seed it wants to protect.
This includes Monsanto's crops contaminating other crops like in the Vernon Hugh Bowman case.
It also promoted (at least in France) round up as biodegradable but we eventually found out it didn't, and went to contaminate the drinking water.
Which is a problem, given that glyphosate based products are currently in the process of being banned in Europe.
The answer from Monsanto to that has been ghostwriting reports and pretend they didn't come from them.
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#307My wife and I got married without buying a diamond ring. I simply refused to spend money in things that are overvalued by the market because some marketing scheme was so strong that it made facts look silly. I told her that I refuse to spend money on things that cause other people pain. Especially when there is no guarantee that the diamond we buy are not blood diamond. Instead we invested our money in buying things…
The historical purpose of an engagement ring/gift was to demonstrate your serious interest and your intentions. Via spending money for her that cannot be taken back. Unfortunatelly, diamonds fit this quite nicely. Actually, the best way to demonstrate it is via these rules: (1) you have to get something that is very hard to get (more money than you normally have), (2) something that has no use for you (you want to co…
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#308Earlier 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.
Off topic, but I'm not sure I got this -- you have advertisements in an elevator ?
(I believe I've only seen them in hotels)
Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#309Re: De Beers admits defeat over man-made diamonds
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
De Beers relies on the fact that ordinary people don't understand diamonds aren't very valuable. After all, the diamonds they see sold by De Beers are expensive, so...?
De Beers plucks a $50 diamond from the mines, charges $5000 for it in jewellery and says that's symbollic of True Love, or whatever nonsense people believe.
But the people making diamond cutting saws do not care about True Love, so they are already buying whatever is cheapest, and they won't pay more than $10 for $10 of diamonds. To them that $50 diamond is worth... $50.
De Beers new plan is to make $50 synthetic diamonds, brand them, get across to consumers how these aren't "real" diamonds (hurting synthetic producers), that they're more "I wanna get into your knickers" than "True Love" and charge say $500 for them to emphasise that they're worse than its $5000 mined diamonds.
That makes no difference to the diamond cutting saw people, they still just want diamonds for their purely mechanical properties, and they'll continue to pay $10 for $10 of little diamonds.
De Beers hopes that this drives the synthetic diamond competition out of their market, and allows it to go back to charging $5000 for a $50 diamond in jewellery. The industrial market operates on a rational basis, there's no profit for De Beers there, it's all about the silly people paying $5000 to signal "True Love".