The diamond industry has a terrible problem. They promoted diamonds as "perfection". The most valuable diamond is supposed to be a crystal with no flaws.
Then they ran into the semiconductor materials industry. Wafer fabs want every atom where it is supposed to be.
So semiconductor materials manufacturers are very good at making crystals with few or no flaws.
So, now the synthetic diamond market looks like this.[1]
DeBeers has been frantically trying to stop the growth of the synthetic gemstone industry.
(They lost on industrial diamonds decades ago; that's all synthetic and cheap.)
DeBeers has an R&D program to develop test instruments. It is just barely possible at present to distinguish synthetic CVD (controlled vapor deposition) diamonds from real ones.[2] From that paper, it looks like some process improvement by the synthetic diamond makers could fix that. Detection involves exposing the diamond to a UV flash lamp, which makes diamonds fluoresce blue briefly, and examining the spectrum that comes back. Natural diamonds have a peak at 425nm, and some CVD synthetics have a peak at 435nm, at least for the ones tested.
There's a PR program for "natural diamonds". But there's also a PR program for synthetic diamonds.[3] The synthetics industry is gaining.
As an investment, diamonds are awful. They are really hard to sell.
Well, if you think about it, mass manufacturing, progress in industrial chemistry, plastics, etc, did a lot of impossible things super cheap.
We have disposable pieces of plastics worth 10 cents that if teleported back to 1600 in bulk (say, 1000 units) would have cost entire counties back then, including the people living on them: light, strong, elaborate and very precisely machined.
About $240, by modern standards quite bad, but for someone in 1600, the ability to go most places in comfort with a decent chunk of stuff with you in some baskets and bags.
I was thinking that about 2 months ago. And then I saw people doing bikepacking/long distance bike touring, and I was quite amazed. With wide enough tires, adequate tire pressure control and seat suspension, people ride huge distances with no problems, on old fashion dirt roads.
The reason I linked a bike above was that they truly are a modern marvel. So unassuming and yet so flexible, reliable and overall... powerful, plus cheap by modern standards. A bike is probably the most accessible high tech modern invention that we take for granted.
I don't think you need seat suspension for bicycles to beat walking. On the kinds of surfaces that foot traffic naturally forms, am average commuter bike is gonna perform very decently.
I think the only qualitative difference would be that modern roads are usable all year whereas natural tracks are generally gonna get unusable when it rains a lot.
It's incredible that we have machines that can take that kind of a beating, while also having precision components on them, and also being light enough to pick up in 1 hand, and being affordable to the poorest members of society.
Diamond heat spreaders are available.[1] Diamond phone screens have been made. Diamond semiconductors are under development, but so far they don't work that well.[2]
> Thermal conductivity of natural diamond was measured to be about 2200 W/(m·K), which is five times more than silver, the most thermally conductive metal.
With less other flaws, cut becomes even more important, and even before this happened, even «triple Excellent» / «Ideal» cut diamonds weren't a guarantee of quality :
Diamonds are a scam and an ethical minefield, but I disagree with the notion that women are brainwashed or shallow for wanting one.
It’s not about the diamond.
It’s about wanting a man with enough resources to waste on a diamond. A diamond’s lack of intrinsic value or utility is a feature. The waste is the point. In a sea of potential mates, finding one who can throw away $3000 as though it were nothing, is a great filter.
“Wedding fireworks can cost anywhere between $3,000 and $25,000, according to Theiss—it all depends on timing and the size of the show you want. The more common range is $3,000 to $5,000 for weddings.”
Exactly. I probably spent $20k this year on vacations (for me and my extended family).
Buy experiences. Money well spent. Not diamonds and other ego-inflating stuff. It keeps the negative flywheel spinning faster and will hurt you long-term.
What's the objection here? A large party with a hired pyrotechnic specialist giving a performance using expendable supplies is going to cost some money. Is this an arguement against large parties in general?
I love how both of you are basically just arguing about different ways of how women have no agency.
"Those women" are definitely "brainwashed" but phrasing it that way is very condescending. It's called advertising and culture and you're not immune to propaganda either.
Some women genuinely value conspicuous consumption as a status symbol the same way some men do. Some women believe diamond rings are a must because "that's the way it is" and they don't want to be outsiders. Some women just like sparkly shiny things.
Calling any of this "brainwashing" makes it sound like this is odd or noteworthy: you only think so because you're appaled by this particular example but you're likely ignorant to the myriads of ways you yourself hold irrational, toxic or even self-destructive values and beliefs due to your upbringing and the culture you exist in.
Yes, diamonds bad. But women who want diamonds aren't exceptionally shallow or odd as humans. They're just shallow and odd in people you are aware of and find distasteful.
I don't think it's really about either of those things all the time (although I'm sure it's all sorts of things at different times for different people).
From my experience with my wife, I think it was much more practical.
Really for her I think it was mostly like "I want to take this seriously and am going to be wearing this ring (or displaying something) all the time and so want to be sure I know what it is and that it's durable."
She doesn't really wear jewelry at all except for her wedding and engagement ring, so she just hadn't thought about engagement rings or jewelry very much period. A diamond was a known quantity, something she could trust, something neutral in color, durable, and so forth.
The metal artist that we went to really liked moissanite but at the time it was the first we had heard of it. At the time synthetic diamonds were more something on the horizon than something you could actually buy.
I think if she had known about moissanite earlier and had time to get familiar with it she probably would have been happy with it.
> It’s about wanting a man with enough resources to waste on a diamond.
well yes, but not really. it's about showing off. it's a status game. which is fine for a certain degree. "we are social animals", etc.
status is intertwined with a lot of very pragmatic interpersonal things (peer pressure of conformism, reciprocating gifts, respecting each other, not being late or too early, taking turns to speak and listen, remembering birthdays, remembering who remembers our birthdays) and community-wide trust (who can ask you a favor, loans, borrow your car, who do you work with).
but there are much better signals for "who do you pick as a mate" than "how many carats does this diamond is?", of course arguably a lot of people are not really good at picking up on those interpersonal signals, so ... they recruit the community through these reflective signals.
Yeah, it's not brainwashing. That's hilarious if people think any marketing company would go to the effort to brainwash people, if such a thing is even possible.
Marketing companies leverage what is already there. Car companies didn't brainwash men into wanting "rugged", "angry" looking "trucks". They merely recognised the slightly pathetic tendency for some men to want to make themselves look bigger and tougher.
It's the same with diamonds. They work because there is some underlying seed of possibility and they have simply been the best at exploiting that.
>That's hilarious if people think any marketing company would go to the effort to brainwash people, if such a thing is even possible. Marketing companies leverage what is already there.
Just compare today's problems with problems from 200 years ago and you'll see how many of them were created ad hoc.
You think men buying rings for women is a selfless gift? They are buying them for the same reason they buy the trucks and many other things: it's for sex.
I haven't been able to access archive.today in a good long while. Cloudflare's challenge page lets me solve a captcha, but doesn't actually remember that I've solved it. So I'm in an endless loop of challenge pages.
If you're wondering, I'm on Firefox connected thru Google Fiber. I've tried disabling Enhanced Tracking Protection, but all that does is make it so I don't have to solve a captcha. I still get the endless loop of challenge pages.
This happens if you use 1.1.1.1 as your DNS resolver, the result of a long-running dispute between Cloudflare and Archive.is[1]; searching HN for “archive cloudflare” will get you lots of discussion.
As I understand it: the technical cause is that the Archive.is authoritative DNS server refuses to respond correctly to requests without EDNS subnet information, and Cloudflare’s resolver refuses to send requests with it. (Cloudflare says this is for privacy reasons, and I believe Archive.is says their response is for legal reasons.) The captcha loop seems to be a recent development; apparently[2] it’s not actually from Cloudflare, just styled to look like it.
Sooooo the weird thing for me is that I never actually used 1.1.1.1, and it's not in my DNS. archive.today loads correctly in Chrome without a problem so I suspect Firefox is just using 1.1.1.1 over DoH or something.
> To counter such threats, Mozilla has partnered with Cloudflare to provide direct DNS resolution from within the Firefox browser using the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox. What this means is that whenever you select or type a web address in the Firefox browser your DNS lookup request will be sent over a secure channel to the Cloudflare Resolver for Firefox rather than to an unknown DNS resolver, significantly decreasing the odds of any unwanted spying or man in the middle attacks.
Other talked about the reasons, but I just want to point it's not Cloudflare - they always put their logo on all the pages, but that captcha page is missing any logos of any sort.
DNS related. Cloudflare, in particular, gets fed incorrect results from archive.ph. I'm not sure they're the only ones, I've also had loops when using 8.8.8.8. But in any case, try a different resolver and it'll probably clear up the captcha loop.
I would like to take this moment to thank https://diamondssuck.com/ for preventing me from buying my wife a diamond, and getting her a much prettier moissanite instead. It's been on hn's front page several times.
Guys, buying diamonds, can complain all day about what a rip off it is (it is).
But if you apprise your fiancé of the alternatives / opp costs (moissanite, man made, second hand, etc) and she still wants a new diamond, just get her a new diamond. It will make her happy for years.
My wife had her heart set on a pink diamond, so that’s what I got her. I made it clear though that if I got this, she is not getting a new one for a long time (she has a tendency to want to rent / sample / change things up). So to her credit she did her homework and spent a few months picking the best one.
Now everytime we go out and she wears it, I can see how she’s happy. It’s worth it to me to see a gift keep giving.
I wouldn't marry anyone whose happiness is dependent on a artificially expensive hard and shiny rock whose prestige was inflated for years by an industry built on slave labor, especially when far less expensive alternatives exist.
If she is apprised of the alternatives and still demands "No I want EXPENSIVE shiny thing" then it's cultural shaming factoring into the decision making. You have to reevaluate what she sees you as: an actual human being, or a provider mannequin whose validity as a partner depends on subjecting yourself to arbitrary ceremonial consumerist prostrations.
I wouldn't care if someone said they wouldn't marry whomever I married for some deal breaker unique to them.
If I disagree with it, I'd think "their loss, sucks to have weird arbitrary standards"
If I agreed then I'd have been lying about my happiness with the relationship.
Either way some things need to be said. I haven't seen any good arguments in favor of purchasing a diamond ring which don't seem to dismiss and devalue the agency and right to an opinion of the purchaser.
Sure - I understand that you have your particular opinions on what communication is ok, I obviously have my own opinions on things that I find ok or not as well, but I also consider what things may be considered out of line by other people before communicating with someone and I think
- I love my wife!
- Well, I wouldn't marry her.
Might be the kind of communication (obviously, broken down here to its base level here) that would be considered out of line by a significant portion of the world population.
>I haven't seen any good arguments in favor of purchasing a diamond ring
As a gift
>which don't seem to dismiss and devalue the agency and right to an opinion of the purchaser.
when buying a gift for someone it is probably good to consider and value the agency and right to an opinion of the receiver.
Not saying you are forced to buy a diamond, I don't have, but that is partially because my wife does not have strong opinions on that subject either way.
Well the breaking it down to the base level itself is part of what makes it objectionable, as well as the removal from context. Obviously I wouldn't say that if it were as distilled to what you paraphrased. I imagine the mode of what is permissible is slightly different in anonymous forum threads vs. real life. Even if it wasn't and I crossed the line a lot of people agreed with me, though maybe on net and only despite the first line of my comment.
> when buying a gift for someone it is probably good to consider and value the agency and right to an opinion of the receiver.
Which was obviously considered in the situation. But buying any gift of course is not a 50:50 affair. One person is spending all the money. By principle I think that person should have more finality in the decision than the person only receiving the gift.
A large diamond actually looks pretty nice (and very different from mossianite), not sure why that is devaluing the agency of anyone (provided the costs are relatively easy to afford).
Even uncut diamond crystals have a very particular "fatty" shine to it that some people might like and enjoy.
However I've seen demands that a fiancé purchase a real diamond, not a much cheaper "synthetic" one, even though it's structurally identical. That this was even a notion affirmed my assumption that the psychological importance of purchasing a diamond is tied to the price itself.
I seriously doubt any regular person can tell the difference between diamond and moissanite, or even cubic zirconia. Of course it's bad policy to lie to your wife-to-be but technically I feel safe saying you could buy any of these and still claim it's a diamond - at least until they decide to pawn it but by that time it's also less important for your relationship I guess.
It's not hard to tell the difference between moissanite and diamond, but a lot of normal people won't really know what to put their finger on or if it's a good or bad thing.
Whenever my wife gets comments about her moissanite, people notice it's different. Due to it's refractive index, it breaks light more and leads to a lot more colors seen when reflected back out of the stone. Loads of people just think it's a fancy diamond though since they don't know anything else and it otherwise looks very diamond like.
CZ will look about the same as diamond just not as sparkly on day one. But it's way softer, so if it's a daily wear it'll get all scratched up within several years. After 10 years of wear the difference between CZ and diamond is pretty clear.
By volume I imagine most jewelry sold is cheap stuff intended to only be worn a few times. Go to any fast fashion store and you'll see piles of cheap earrings, necklaces, etc. Not every piece of jewelry needs to become a family heirloom.
If you put them next to each other anyone can tell they are different. Anyone who has seen a few diamonds up and close will see that the moissanite looks different.
Yikes, that's quite the binary distinction... Surely there is room between those subjective descriptions of people for "hey, I like this thing even though it's irrational, ok?"
Let people live their lives and you do you. People aren't a "provider mannequin" just because they like to make their partner happy.
acknowledgement of irrationality, especially one that isn't accompanied with a wish to better themselves away from that irrationality, would be a major red flag for me personally entering into a long-term relationship.
there is also a great distinction between "Yeah I know another helping of chocolate syrup on my ice cream is a bad decision, but it'll make me feel good today.", and "You need to make a 10kUSD+ purchase on a totally arbitrary piece of jewelry that very well may have incited real human suffering and violence, even though I know that desire is irrational and poorly balanced."
I would assume -- maybe incorrectly, I admit -- that this form of irrationality would follow the individual and subsequently the entire relationship.
We all have different 'red flag dictionaries', so by all means people should live their lives; but I doubt I am alone in my assumptions.
> "You need to make a 10kUSD+ purchase on a totally arbitrary piece of jewelry that very well may have incited real human suffering and violence, even though I know that desire is irrational and poorly balanced."
That's a tricky topic to broach. Drop one zero from the price tag, and this definitely applies much more to your smartphone and computer than it does to gems. Drop one or two more zeroes, and this covers the clothes you wear just as much.
I'm not denying you have a point here. The suffering and violence are real. But my wife and I both went down the road of paying attention to that, and we've learned one has only so much attention to pay before you can hardly purchase anything at all. Nearly everyone has a cut-off point, past which they stop digging into those issues, otherwise it becomes debilitating.
Call this irrational, but the amount of personal responsibility one should feel for some injustice they benefit from, among with a billion or two other people, is an unsolved philosophical and ethical problem.
Part of the comparison here is that the alternatives are both cheaper and practically better. So it doesn't apply so much unless you chose to buy, say, clothes from brand A that were indistinguishable from brand B to normal people but cost more and involved more child labour. Or if apple made a special phone you could buy that looked the same but cost 10x as much because it also includes payments to warlords.
> Call this irrational, but the amount of personal responsibility one should feel for some injustice they benefit from, among with a billion or two other people, is an unsolved philosophical and ethical problem.
I don't think it's unsolved, it's just unsolved in a way that makes people feel ok. The reality is that we regularly choose minor improvements to our lives or even just spend through laziness at a cost of other people's lives.
> Part of the comparison here is that the alternatives are both cheaper and practically better.
It's not the case here, because you're not buying gems for their practical value. If you were, then there would not be an issue - lab-grown diamonds for cutting things would be even cheaper than they are, and you wouldn't care about other gems unless you were playing with lasers or something.
As much a I hate it, the entire point of jewelry is that it's expensive and useless. It's the OG "proof of work" kind of thing - you prove your affection by burning significant resources on some piece of junk, and the recipient can use that piece of junk to prove their status to others ("look how much wealth I can burn on stupid shit", or "look how much wealth I can get someone else to burn on my behalf"). Layer a millennium of traditions and a century of De Beers marketing on top, and we get to where we are.
Being practical devalues jewelry; being cheap is opposite of its point; being alternative means being unauthentic, and makes the wearer a liar.
> The reality is that we regularly choose minor improvements to our lives or even just spend through laziness at a cost of other people's lives.
That's the unsolved part. For any given thing enjoyed by me and a billion other people, with hardly anyone talking it's wrong, I suddenly have to take some stranger's accusations and/or guilt-tripping at face value. The math goes like this:
- Surely my responsibility can't be more than one-billionth of the whole thing;
- It's not like I can actually make a difference without upending my whole life. That doesn't feel commensurate with one billionth of whatever the bad thing is;
("Voting with your wallet" is bullshit; boycotts don't work; you can't really make a dent without a large movement here, and good luck creating one over random consumer decision - you're competing with efforts to start a movement over ever other such decision, and people's attention is finite.)
- You came out of nowhere and started guilt-tripping me, it's not just inconvenient and makes me feel bad, but it's also a technique used by scammers and cultists and politicians - so why should I trust your math in the first place?
With a little hand-waving, the solution to above inequality is "I'm not going to change, and I don't like you anymore".
I'm not saying this is good - just that it is. That's the bit that's unsolved in practice.
I've been tempted to try making them at home since about 2007, but for some reason all the different people I've lived with since then have objected to me running a lightly modified microwave oven continuously for a month at a time, with a few holes in the heating cavity so I can install an inverted pyrex bowl and pipes to connect it to a low-pressure methane supply system…
I mean, sort of? The median woman who wants the gorgeous diamond ring from her husband is NOT thinking “This will be great insurance in case we become destitute”. Because everyone knows the resell value is terrible! Worst return on an insurance policy ever.
They want them because they are pretty and because – like it or not – it’s what society has taught them to expect.
That's what we are doing here! But in this case most people seems to be sympathetic to the people that suffered to get you and your wife a diamond? I don't think rich people with frivolous desires need any more "empathy"
Diamonds aren't rich people game, they're middle-class and above game. Hell, probably even below. That's what makes the arguments about being associated[0] with violence fall on deaf ears - approximately everyone in the west is participating. Not the Evil Bad No Good Rich One-Percenters. It's all the 90-percenters.
--
[0] - It's always "some of them", "could be". The industry has blood on its hand. The particular rock you might buy your wife? Unclear. It's not like with e.g. tantalum capacitors which, at some point, AFAIK were all made out of tantalum sourced from child slavery mines in Africa. I honestly don't know if "some" diamonds are more like 50% or 5% or 0.5%.
> The particular rock you might buy your wife? Unclear
Not unclear: as the not-blood diamond is more expensive, buying it is morally the same as buying the blood one. Now that is similar with many things that is produced and sold around the world, the problem with diamonds (and other luxury goods) is that we definitely could have a better society without it. It is not the same as giving up on iphones (which also shouldn't be produced by kids or starving people btw)
If you really believe that humans can or do operate "rationally" about any significant part of their lives, you should probably step back and re-examine your own behavior and that of those around you. Your definition of "rational" and the assumption that it could be universal is itself irrational. The fact that you spent any time typing a comment on this site is wildly irrational.
> The fact that you spent any time typing a comment on this site is wildly irrational.
I find making such comments very rational: They convince random observers not to support wars and child labor without any reason apart from following blind marketing.
> If you really believe that humans can or do operate "rationally" about any significant part of their lives
People can and do operate rationally from time to time: It's our main difference from the animals.
> Your definition of "rational" and the assumption that it could be universal is itself irrational.
If your definition of "rational" is supporting wars and child labor, then I indeed agree with you that you are irrational.
While I personally would agree with your distinction, I do thing your example demonstrates a relative bias. For most of us, yeah, there is a difference between adding chocolate syrup to ice cream and a buying a 10kUSD piece of jewelry just because.
Yet for many other people, there is little to no practical difference in the value of those two choices. Are rich people some how less pragmatic/objective because 10k is effectively pocket change to them?
My point here is that there is no objective sense of rationality here - it's all relative to the point of the observer, and casting judgement on others from your own particular viewpoint is largely meaningless (and presumptuous).
There's so much irrationality in the world, everyone is guilty of them: irrationally believing in gods, irrationally being happy when someone else wins a sports match, irrationally being happy with a very expensive red sportscar, etc, etc, etc.
How does bringing comfort and peace mean that religion is not irrational? (I don't personally believe it is irrational, just that your logic is flawed.)
> Looking for a woman which doesn't have irrationality? Well, good luck with that! ;) [1]
> Nobody is perfect, and when choosing a life partner, you will also need to accept things that you might not like that much, but are still very small compared to all the things you do like.
The casual misogynism [1] doesn't really add anything to the useful idea presented later in your comment.
I find myself increasingly alienated from the crowd here because of the daily misogyny, but I interpreted this more as "we are all irrational creatures."
Try any other bit of social media. Some how my instagram feed (whenever I actually go to use it) is now full of silly "haha my husband is stupid he can't find anything without me" nonsense, or "lol, my wife can't drive or deal with any sort of complex social engagement like getting a car repaired".
Bland judgement based on arbitrary buckets like gender/sex seem to be the norm vs actual, thoughtful discourse.
Sorry, was mostly just agreeing with you and adding that gender based nonsense is endemic everywhere. It's alienating me across the whole media spectrum.
I understand the point your making with respect to most things. Wife wants 1.3x price carpet instead of x price carpet because it looks better. They discuss and compromise. Husband wants to go to 2y price vacation instead of y price, they compromise on 1.5y price. Bride wants z+50 people at wedding and groom wants z, etc. so on. The synthesis of love languages, consumer culture, the psychological musings of commitment, devotion, the pleasures of our immortality projects in monogamy, etc. is deeply ingrained into the human experience. It's a part of why we live, do things, work our psyches into powerful frenzies on the esteem and cares of others. I get that. It's wonderful, it's beautiful.
However, I personally think the "rings must have a very expensive diamond" thing to be very silly. I know that it may be subjectively very important to the potential recipient, but that it seems to sometimes really be so inflexible feels murky in the "what normally tacit power dynamic in this relationship is this revealing?" sort of way. The only significant tangible difference between the diamond and moissanite is the mental totem: "It is a diamond, he bought a diamond for me. He wanted to buy something else but I wanted this and he got it". Which is a problem when it comes to that: that the recipient cannot budge on something so arbitrary. It feels more like the whispers of the DeBeers cultural brainwashing: "You don't deserve to have her if the sacrifice you made to purchase this wasn't big enough"
If a woman gets X amount of utility from a diamond ring over an alternative, how would it be invalid if I said I got -X utility from having to purchase it?
This is one of those hard to beat arguments where I know I'm not facing a purely rational point of view. I understand it, that's why I added the first paragraph of this response. It's one of those issues where I feel I'd need to have a Christopher Hitchens level of rhetorical skill to make any headway in my favor.
As someone else already mentioned, did your last vehicle purchase involve you cost-analyzing every individual part of your car versus other cars in it's class? Of course not.
I know that a 33k Mazda3 and a 33k Honda Civic are "similar", but neither of them are exactly worth the same 33 thousand dollars. But who cares, really? Ultimately, even a 33k purchase is a "throw" away. You're not gonna compare control arm thickness to find the better value, and you're not gonna examine where the materials came from.
No one is immune from trying to fit into a group, by valuing things that the group values.
You can tell your self that your Audi is objectively the best car for you, or that Mac is required to do your job most effectively.
For anyone who thinks they are totally immune, go and spend a week with an Amazonian tribe, and try to spot how many cultural differences there are between you, and then those differences are just you fitting in with your fellow tribe at home.
The best you can say is that there's a healthy balance between fitting into your pack and being subsumed by it. I don't think one diamond makes that case though. What is the difference in principle between that an someone spending years of their time making a hobby os or spending money and time making a computer from valves. Both things that 'our pack' would tend to view favourably.
> I wouldn't marry anyone whose happiness is dependent on a artificially expensive hard and shiny rock whose prestige was inflated for years by an industry built on slave labor, especially when far less expensive alternatives exist.
One woman's diamond is another engineer's MacBook.
Divorce happens after a failed relationship. Are you seriously saying that my wife is made more likely to end a happy relationship because of the outcomes of a divorce proceeding?
The availability of divorce means that failed relationships (which the availability of divorce does not cause) which end up in marriage can be resolved, but neither marriage nor the availability of divorces causes most of those relationship failures.
The argument was never that the availability of divorce caused the (extremely high) outcome of divorce.
It is, and continues to be, that the extremely unbalanced (against the man) outcome of divorce creates a massive power unbalance in the relationship. And that's the incentive.
As the almost-guaranteed to be greatly benefited party, pressing the button is, rationally, a much better option than trying to resolve any issues in the relationship.
A relationship w/o marriage lacks this perverse incentive.
I will pass on giving Her a diamond and a government-endorsed knife to stab me with. We are supposed to be equal and this shit is ridiculous.
Note I am ending my participation on this discussion here, on my end, as it has started to go in circles, some heat is sensed, and I can tell it will not be productive to go any further.
By anybody not willfully ignorant on marriage and its recorded outcomes.
It would have to be willfully ignorant because, if living in the states, not noticing how much it is happening all around oneself would be very unlikely.
I would even say it's perfectly rational. Having someone who understands you and supports you, reliably by your side is a huge boost to your capacity to reason.
Hate is irrational, and yet it does not justify murder.
Similarly, you can love w/o sabotaging the relationship by marrying, giving the other party a red button and a strong incentive to press it, effectively pushing the relationship out of balance.
Statistically, they will. And statistically, you'll be screwed.
Sure, we're not naturally monogamous. Marriage is something that we developed over time because it leads to more stable societies with less violence (no fighting over breeding rights, inheritance, etc). It makes sense now just as much as it did 5,000 years ago. Plenty of research shows that children from two parent households end up living more successful lives with more opportunities. And I'm a proponent of not getting married for any reason other than having children.
We don't choose to purchase slave phones, computers, etc. over free trade alternatives. Choosing blood diamonds over artificial diamonds, makes the cruelty the point, no?
As a consumerist society we sure choose slave made e-waste over "fairly sourced" tech like Fairphone. When's the last time we heard a peep from them?
It SHOULD be easier to make an industry of fairly-sourced tech than it is to make an industry of fairly sourced minerals.
But the tech industry makes far far more off of their slave labor than any mining industry, and the average person is far more likely to ignore the guilt of a device they need to use daily than a rock they wear occasionally.
It's about the sacrifice, and what that represents. It's about the tradition.
I would do (just about) anything for my wife, up to and including working arbitrarily hard for an arbitrary rock that she arbitrarily thinks is meaningful and awesome. I don't care about any of those details, and neither should any partner. You should be caring about what she wants.
If your partner wanted a diamond for all those other reasons, and you explained they aren't those things, then your partner wouldn't want a diamond anymore. That's not the case in this hypothetical example.
As the commenter upstream said, be aware of what you are buying, do your research and be knowledgeable, but for God sakes get her what she wants!
> It's about the sacrifice, and what that represents. It's about the tradition.
Diamond wedding rings have only been en vogue since De Beers' 1946 marketing campaign. It's a garish facet of soulless modernity masquerading as classical. Even the notion of pampering one's wife is a way of maintaining the patriarchal division of labor by keeping women in a dependent role.
In a world where money talks, insisting that men afford diamonds while women only receive them is tantamount to disenfranchisement and an abridgement of women's free expression. Are we equal partners, or is she your domestic servant? Are you the gatekeeper of her wealth and, therefore, speech and agency?
What a man buying a diamond ring "represents" is his agreement to financially provide, while the woman’s acceptance of the ring "represents" her agreement not to pursue financial independence.
It doesn't represent either of those things to us, and to many.
Ultimately it's about tradition. I wear the ring my father (a master jeweler) made for my grandfather who wore it as his favorite ring for most of his life before passing it on to me when he passed. My wife's ring was hand made by my father, with a diamond which sat in his safe for years prior waiting for me.
It's not about the things. It's about the people.
In your rush to make these little trinkets spin a whole tale about broader humanity, you're missing the humanity right in front of you.
I will admit that, as I was writing my little tirade, I was thinking "damn, though, if that ring is passed down even one generation, it gathers enough meaning to invalidate my claim."
I won't begrudge anyone their personal family heirlooms. I completely understand your perspective, because it's a nice story.
That being said, you've shifted the goalposts with your anecdata. Familial inheritance is an exception which preuves the rule. And, furthermore, jewelry being your family business, I suspect you've a misunderstanding essential to your paycheck. My words are pearls before oysters.
You may yet understand the harm of patriarchal heteronormativity (heck, The Feminine Mystique came out in 1963, and the Cult of Domesticity is far from abolished) but probably the subject of engagement rings is not the radicalizing grain of sand for you.
Well, first of all, whether you read this or not (let alone agree, or concede even an iota) thanks for the opportunity to articulate my thoughts.
I don't currently have a partner, no, but I inherited these views from many years of lovers, partners, and friends. As a straight, white man raised in a Christian nation, I held the familiar, patriarchal views on marriage and gender roles without question until I started dating queer women in college (and almost exclusively thereafter).
I think that "how they feel about it" is they would prefer to live in a world with men who are familiar with—and reluctant to participate in—patriarchal dynamics. These women have been hurt by men who mistake domination for romance, and furthermore believe this mistake to be commonplace. I can't say what they "feel" about my precise thoughts here, because I'm extrapolating from a lot of data over many years: conversations, books, research, statistics, workplace and social experiences, etc.
I think it's safe to say, though, that I cultivated a feminist viewpoint in part because the women in my milieu wouldn't have otherwise felt safe around me. This is a perspective that I took in an attempt to empathize with women who explicitly told me they were both weary and wary of men who don't take this perspective.
So unless I've made a terrific mistake and fundamentally misunderstood dozens upon dozens of women and feminists, I think they feel safe, relieved, and reassured. That's all I'm trying to be, by the way: safe, and not harmful in the ways I've seen people hurt.
...and I think engagement rings cement relationships that facilitate abuse. I doubt you spend much time interrogating the sources and prevalence of abuse, but little matters more to me.
The shiny thing is a proof that her man has the money and that she can make him spend it the way she wants. If she can't present the proof or a suitable replacement, she will be labeled a loser in her group. That's herd mentality 101.
I guess that works for most men. Personally, one of my criteria is that she can't want a diamond, that might sound crazy but I want a partner in life that is financially sensible and fiscally responsible, we have to leave our children with more than we were left with or we have failed, that is a core part of my philosophy of family building.
Thankfully I found her. I also had a talk with her dad about it after I met him and he called diamonds a scam. So she gets it and I'm happy.
> we have to leave our children with more than we were left with or we have failed
You’re being pretty harsh on yourself there. Wealth doesn’t only depend on your own efforts and behavior, but a myriad other things. Also, how do you calculate whether they are left with more than you? Is that about inflation adjusted wealth, or other things like education, resilience, number of hours spent with their dad, physical and mental health?
For me it is capacity to build the life they want and to do the same for their kids.
Financially, yes, I need to leave them better off than me, inflation adjusted of course. Education, good habits, good examples, all of these things matter to me as well.
My priority is giving my kids the tools to build their life themselves. For me, that means being smart about education if they want it (doesn’t need to be an elite uni IMO, but in our country there are none anyway) and the ability to maintain long term relationships.
I think the latter is tricky and there’s no guarantee, but we go out of our way to always leave shame out of the equation (big relationship destroyer), and make them socialize (again, if they want to). Eg we have a car with extra seats so we can drive their friends too. We‘re also investing heavily (considering our finances) by putting them in a Montessori school where they can mingle with kids freely, with more teachers available to quell any mobbing.
Splurging every once in a while does not inherently make someone “fiscally irresponsible.” For many people, especially on this forum, $3k-$5k for a ring is literally a few days work or less worth of pay.
(Please no one get pedantic on ring cost to me, absolutely not the point of this comment)
It’s not the cost that’s the issue, it’s the underlying desire. Belief in astrology is seemingly harmless, but it’s a sign of underlying irrationality that I find unacceptable. The ritual around a hunk of carbon is the same category of thinking IMO.
Also, ‘a few days salary’ rather defeats the rituals purpose.
Eh, I’m fervently anti-diamond (they’re silly imo), but I can acknowledge that, to some, they represent (I think?) a lasting commitment and are a cultural tradition.
If the desire is emotional, then there’s no reasoning with it anyway. (And not everything in life need be logical.)
Does it count as a cultural tradition if it was manufactured within the last 2 generations? It’s kinda like asking a family if they celebrate Toyotathon or Hondadays as a tradition.
KFC Christmas dinner in Japan is a fun one. To be fair, all of our major holidays have been co-opted by corporations and they are still warmly celebrated. Going back to wedding rings, giving your new partner something of value is a very old tradition indeed (though what's perceived as valuable has changed greatly).
Giving a partner something of actual value is one thing, but diamonds aren’t worth what you’re paying. That purchase needs to support an entire industry and massive marketing campaign around maintaining an artificial tradition.
You might not value it, but I dare say you value things that I don't value.
Define artificial tradition.
Yes someone can invent it, but it requires people to actually adopt it.
All the trappings of Christmas were invented by someone. They aren't 'artificial' though
Value is defined in free markets by what you can sell something for.
Artificial tradition as in created by a marketing campaign to sell a product. Same things as eating “KFC on Christmas” in Japan or more recently “Happy Honda Days” just slightly older and more widespread.
>Value is defined in free markets by what you can sell something for
So if someone can sell you a diamond for X, it is worth X. So the diamond is worth what you're paying.
Was Christmas created to sell Christianity?
I just don't get the distinction. A 'natural' tradition isn't somehow more wholesome, we've just forgotten who invented it. And the meaning still derives from the people partaking in that tradition.
> So if someone can sell you a diamond for X, it is worth X.
Note quite, when most people buy land the seller doesn’t receive the full amount you pay realtors get their cut of the transaction. Same deal with used cars etc, the transaction costs are removed from the sales price when calculating value.
Commercial Diamonds are just an unusually extreme case.
> I just don't get the distinction. A 'natural' tradition isn't somehow more wholesome, we've just forgotten who invented it. And the meaning still derives from the people partaking in that tradition.
The meaning of diamonds still derives from advertising which is the haven’t stopped because people stop caring when they do. This clearly demonstrates the artificial nature of what’s happening.
Nobody needs to advertise saying excuse me if you bump into someone in a crowd, that has been maintained culturally for a long time without outside influence.
Saying someone created it therefore it’s all the same is a meaningless statement. People create different things, saying someone created something doesn’t imply what that thing is.
>Note quite, when most people buy land the seller doesn’t receive the full amount you pay realtors get their cut of the transaction. Same deal with used cars etc.
In my country house selling generally uses an agency model, I (optionally) employ someone to market my house.
I get the full value, and then pay them a fee.
A second hand car seller sells the car, they make money by adding value. If I choose to buy a car I can go direct to a seller but they may not have want I want, may not be available at convenient times, and I'll have less come back if things go wrong.
>Saying someone created it therefore it’s all the same is a meaningless statement. People create different things, saying someone created something doesn’t imply what that thing is.
You're implying who created that thing is more important than what the thing is.
So can we agree that it's the thing that's important, not who made it.
It really doesn’t matter how the transaction is structured, sellers can do that legwork themselves but that’s also a cost. If you sell your house for 1 million and taxes eat 10k and the agents eat 10k then the house must be worth 980k to you because that’s what ends up in your bank account.
Which is why economics define the term value as what the seller keeps after selling something because if the seller thinks it’s worth more than that they wouldn’t do the transaction.
> You’re implying who created the thing is more importantly than what the thing is.
No I am arguing what maintains the thing is important. People argue about who created the first iconic foods lie Philly Cheese Stake or Deep Dish Pizza etc, but they don’t need to actively maintain its cultural inertia.
Diamond engagement rings on the other hand only exist with active effort on the part of Diamond Merchants. Which is why they keep being advertised as such.
It’s trivial to make an idea like an advertising slogan catch on when you’re blasting it over the airwaves regularly, but people very quickly forget about them without regular reinforcement. Here’s some of the most famous US slogans from the 20th century fill in the brand: "All the News That's Fit to Print", "Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't.", "Where's the beef?" "The pause that refreshes"
If you’re old enough you might even remember them or the equivalent from where you live, but they aren’t going to roll off the tongue the way more recent examples like “_ eat Fresh”, “Just do it”, “The Best a Man Can Get”, “Like a good neighbor, _ is there.” etc do. Those slogans aren’t better, the difference is just recent advertising budgets.
Yes, it counts. If you look at most modern traditions, 90% of them are less than 100-150 years old.
Christmas today looks nothing like Christmas in 1900, across the world.
Most of the foods today (and I'm not talking about fast food) were invented in the same period. At least their modern incarnations, sometimes they have really old names but the old versions had very little in common with the current food.
I disagree, Tinsel is at the edge of that 150 year window only going back to 1890’s, but Christmas hasn’t changed that much from 200 years ago. If you look at old pictures Christmas trees taken in 1900 it looks basically the same as one today except for the LED lighting showing how slowly things evolved.
Documentation isn’t that great, but back in the 1450’s people decorated fir trees with apples alongside other ornaments which is the origin of modern round ornaments. By the 1530 there where rules limiting people to one tree in their homes. Massachusetts outlawed Christmas celebrations back in 1659 outside of Church attendance.
The tradition had spread well outside of Germany even back in 1841 Winser Castle had a Christmas Tree.
You're talking about Central and Northern Europe (+ their colonies).
Christmas in Eastern Europe and most other places looked nothing like that. Heck, Seychelles and Hawaii decorate their local trees like they're fir trees in Scandinavia.
Yes the tradition spread, but people don’t live in the same place our ancestors did 600 years ago either. Traditions diffuse across generations, cultures, and geographic borders that doesn’t somehow make them new or fake.
> Yes the tradition spread, but people don’t live in the same place our ancestors did 600 years ago either.
Yes, they do :-)
The vast majority of people, especially in underdeveloped or developing countries, DO live in the general area where their ancestors moved during the last migration, which for some was thousands of years ago. People really don't move away unless it's easy or they're forced to.
And my comment also included stuff like food. Most current food is modern.
Most people have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 16 great grandparents, etc out to several generations before incest kids in. Many of those people stayed in place, but when you’re talking hundreds of thousands of people they aren’t all sedentary.
Even just within Africa there’s been a huge amount of migration recently.
Not all of this was even voluntarily. I have ancestors that trace back to Spanish Armada in 1588 getting stuck in England.
> Most current food is modern.
Only by the strictest interpretation of recipes. Most food is remixes of ancient staples like bread and cheese, or like tomatoes local plants that spread hundreds of years ago.
You could get a cheeseburger, as in ground beef topped with cheese served on a bun, going back to antiquity. Thomas Jefferson had "potatoes served in the French manner" at a White House dinner in 1802. Thin sliced potatoes boiled in oil may have first entered the western diet all the way back in 1623, but we don’t know what "papas fritas" means.
Staples like rice are obviously ancient and still make up a large part of peoples diets.
Again new != more common. Peoples diets can change significantly even if the foods they eat doesn’t.
That said meat was more common than generally portrayed. Fish has been a staple food in much of the world for a long time. Dramatically lower human population until recently means overfishing has largely been a more recent concern.
> The ritual around a hunk of carbon is the same category of thinking IMO.
Positional goods have real effects, mediated by other people, in a way that astrology doesn't directly.
Reducing the role of such things is often good life advice, and pushing back on mined diamonds in particular is morally motivated as well, but I don't think it's right to consider it the same as astrology.
Buying a lottery ticket when the jackpot hits a billion dollars and blowing 100k in Las Vegas are both gambling, but the first is essentially harmless fun while the second is a sign of deeper issues.
there is a difference between people who see in themselves that irrationality and express a desire to change or improve, and those that decide that the world needs to bend towards the irrationality, regardless of how uncomfortable that makes others.
A line should be drawn when the irrationality of one causes inarguable and debilitating friction in the relationships of that person.
In other words : It's okay to be the person who loves pink, dresses in pink, bathes in pink -- until it disallows that person to find meaningful work/friends/mates/whatever; then it's more than just human irrationality, it's the inability to cope with others and the world at large.
When considering any long term commitment one should ask "In what ways
are you mad?". If both of you have enough insight to answer, that's a
very solid foundation to work with.
Certainly, but I was just pointing out to OP that finding it unacceptable when they person they marry has some kind of irrationality is very strong and likely not logical. For one, the affection most relationships are based on love/affection which isn't rational in most cases.
I’ve seen people get marred who are actively planning on getting divorced quickly afterwards. The idea that marriage is some deep institution based on love/affection is more myth than reality.
It’s also not particularly uncommon for divorcing couples to still have sex and even care for each other deeply. Based on one study something like ~6% of divorces result in the couple remarrying each other and of those marriages only 30% or so end in a second divorce.
Spending money on something expensive but valueless to appease someone is starting what is supposed to be a lifelong partnership on the wrong foot. I'm happy to get my fiancé something expensive, as long as it's valuable. I want her to have something valuable if I fail as a husband, it's more meaningful, it's a real commitment rather than a demonstration of willingness to appease. A woman that can't see that distinction is, to me, a woman that isn't interested in building a future.
I am also against buying expensive stones, but for a different reason. If you view diamonds as status symbols, buying them is not irrational. It's just an approach to life that I don't follow.
I don't have problem with the cost so much (but serious proposals were supposed to be 3x the salary, no? so you lose quite a bit) but rather overall business and how it manipulates people.
From poor people destroying their lives in Congo open pit mines to deBeers laughing in your face when selling you small rock which is not that rare for as much money as you are willing to accept. And if you got any form of certificate from then that your specific diamond is not blood diamond, well that paper has less value than used toilet paper, nobody could ever check or enforce that. So people here mentioning how their wives glow when looking at diamonds, well they are looking at shiny human suffering. And if future wife doesn't care enough about that, well you just learned a very interesting personality trait of her, without the need to go through years of relationship.
There are already enough people on Earth, such that our civilization is very unsustainable. Consider adopting existing children if you actually care for the environment.
My point is, your expectation of genes being directly connected with the good or evil, or with sociopathy, is naive at best and racist at worst, while at the same time you're using it as an attempt to deny the devastating impact of procreation on the environment.
Ahh, many of your basic assumptions here are false.
A goldfish can’t be an environmentalist so some minimum cognitive function is required thus demonstrating a genetic component. Note however that doesn’t suggest a goldfish or a human with such extremely diminished capacity is evil. Your good/evil axis and environmentalism is thus clearly separated.
Even if you assume as you suggest there is some good or evil DNA suggesting “it’s racist” would imply a specific distribution of these genes along racial lines. Which is itself deeply offensive because it comes from a place of deep seated racism.
People of extremely diminished capacity are also still worthy of adoption. I could go on, but people as horrible as you should be shunned.
And she may be looking for someone who can afford to purchase a single luxury good without going broke?
Of course these days by the time you get to the jewelry phase, this kind of matchmaking is usually resolved anyway. I suspect the tradition started much longer ago when folks got married very quickly (compared to today’s standards).
I tend to agree. This falls in the same realm as a fancy wedding versus a trip to a courthouse to get married. Some couples are fine with going to a courthouse, others will never accept it even if they have to borrow to accomplish it. When it comes to big weddings there is no such thing as a smart expense. Most couples would be better off by going to a judge to get married but that just can't be accepted by many. Diamonds are just another cost of getting married by most couples.
My wife and I had a pretty expensive wedding. You could buy a nice car for that amount. It wasn't supposed to be that way.
But we were living in Europe at the time, and the wedding was going to be in Maryland, so we had to get a wedding coordinator to make it go well. And she introduced us to florists, chefs, photographers, etc....
She helped make that wedding the best it could possibly be, and I don't regret any of the money we spent. Nor does my wife. That was one of the best events we have ever participated in, and over the decades we still get positive comments from our friends who were present there.
So, yeah. It was a lot of money. But we feel it was money well spent.
> Your wedding and funeral are the only two times everyone you care about will be in one room. And you only get to experience one of those.
And yet, during both those times you will have no meaningful engagement with all those people you care about.
If you want your wedding to be a meaningful event, you need to keep it small; the larger a party[1] is, the less engagement the host will get with the average attendee.
[1] You shouldn't forget that a wedding is nothing more than an expensive party that everyone else will forget.
I guess if they are desperate to get married they do whatever. Of they can discuss expectations at the beginning of the relationship like they do with other goals (i.e. kids or no kids).
They literally paying to go to the clink. Nothing that a marriage license permits you to do that you can’t do without one. Except you can be liable to get sued when the relationship ends. Literally the only differentiator of significance.
No, that's not true. As I said, that depends on where you live. For example, in Ireland, for children born outside of marriage, only the mother has an automatic right to guardianship. The same is true in the UK unless the father is added to the birth certificate. The same is true in most US States - no automatic parental rights without marriage.
I am an American (living abroad), and while your comment is technically correct, permission to remain long term and work in a country is one of the benefits to a legal marriage.
And make sure you appraise her of it - shenanigans like buying something else and passing it off as a diamond could result in her being absolutely embarrassed in front of her friends, which should not be a position you want to put her in.
From what I hear, moissanite (and man-made diamonds) are pretty much indistinguishable from natural diamonds. How would someone's friends figure out that it's not a natural diamond? I would think the only way the wife would know is if she asked about the diamond's papers, if she was going to get an insurance policy for it or something.
Synthetic diamonds are insitinguishable to the naked eye from natural diamonds (hint: they contain less impurities), but the moissante refracts the light in a different, more colourful, way that I personally don't like. Lab grown diamonds are the way to go if you or your partner don't like moissante, DeBeers or forced child labour. Specialized jewelers can tell if a diamond is lab grown or natural.
> How would someone's friends figure out that it's not a natural diamond? I would think the only way the wife would know is if she asked about the diamond's papers, if she was going to get an insurance policy for it or something.
It actually doesn't matter how she finds out that you lied to her about the biggest life change she will ever experience for the rest of her life. What matters is that lying to a person you want to marry is a sure-fire way to end the marriage at some definite future point.
Arguing that it's okay because you will never be found out isn't relevant.
> Arguing that it's okay because you will never be found out isn't relevant.
I didn't argue this at all, and in a reply to another comment below, 3 hours before your comment, I made it clear that all I was saying was that it's a bit farfetched to say someone is going to be embarrassed in front of her friends because of the ring.
The social dynamics you are describing at first come across as absurd. It is so divorced from any lived experience, instead resembling something out of satire or a sitcom. Then of course I remember some people earnestly live like this, and then it is just sad.
Sure, but calling them your spouse then not giving a crap about their feelings is not fair. You were free to marry someone else, who thinks more in line the way you do.
I am a person who doesn't wish to spend $20,000 on a rock so that my wife won't be embarrassed in front of her friends. And that is why I chose to marry a woman who thinks that spending $20,000 on a rock is a silly thing to do.
That was my point. If you married someone who doesn't like diamonds, fine.
The original comment was about "shenanigans like buying something else and passing it off as a diamond". Isn't there anything your partner likes? Would you buy something else because you don't wish to spend $X on Y, "passing it off as Y", and embarrass her in front of her friends?
Exactly. The deception is the problem and secretly buying a “real conflict” diamond for a woman who doesn’t want to be involved with it would be just as bad.
I have no idea why you're being downvoted for sharing a personal story. And your opinion is as valid as anyone else's in matters of taste. De gustibus non est disputandum.
Didn't downvote, but online forums are rarely a good place for relationship advice.
In particular, if you're marrying someone, getting a grip on what she might appreciate for years is a good first step, especially as the premise is the discussion has already been started in the couple and she voices her own opinions.
How it goes down from there is probably a microcosm of how they'll deal with their future decisions.
For some, it's about the principle/value alignment. Similar to how you'll likely be happier (or at least have fewer conflicts) with someone who shares your dietary preferences or religion.
Sometimes it's no big deal, and I'd recommend your advice. But if it is a big deal for someone, then just be up front about it and why you will/won't do it.
> My wife had her heart set on a pink diamond, so that’s what I got her. I made it clear though that if I got this, she is not getting a new one for a long time (she has a tendency to want to rent / sample / change things up). So to her credit she did her homework and spent a few months picking the best one.
Sounds like me talking about my toddler and his Legos
Why does the topic of individual couple negotiating decisions some people don't agree with make people so uncharitable and derisive? The person you replied talked about something critical to functional relationships which is the open communication about wants, boundaries, implications. Both individuals likely had unspoken thoughts or motivations. This is a relationship success story where people identify and share what is important to them. There's undoubtedly areas of the relationship where the roles are reversed, and I am sure you have your own "legos" too.
In 2023, the diamond mining industry in South Africa and Botswana is pretty clean, treats workers well, and pays good wages. I cannot answer for other countries in Africa, but you can be very specific about the origin of your diamond when buying it.
Even if it's "clean" relative to worse places, it's still not ethical.
Mining is still dangerous work. The workers are still underpaid. The profits are still stolen by companies that are literally the vestiges of European colonialism.
There are a lot of diamond mines, many in Canada, a number in Australia, there are a number that are mobile marine based ventures with state of the art ships sucking in sediments and sifting for diamonds.
None of your comments applies to any of the mines mentioned; Canada, Australia, and the marine operations all abide by OSHA regulations and pay good wages.
If you want to make a specific comment about conflict diamonds, for example, it pays to be aware that it's not just mining that sucks in war zones .. quality of life is pretty poor all around.
The marine mining ships I linked work in Africa, I've worked in several types of mines, I've had a career as an exploration geophysicist, and I worked on a resource intelligence mapping project that took me to mines across the globe.
There are mines I wouldn't work in, there are many mines I'd have no issue working in.
Which mines have you you worked in and what was your role?
The article you linked literally criticizes the Namibia mine for causing ecological damage to the marine ecosystem from repeated trawling. All that for superfluous rocks we can make synthetically.
Granted, maybe there are good mines out there, but I still think commercial extraction of resources is almost surely damaging to its surrounding environment. You can justify that for some useful material, but it's hard to justify it for diamonds.
Here at least we can agree, I view the bulk of diamond and gold mining as a waste of energy for "pretty things" to prop up a value growth mindset that is neccesary neither economically nor to advance quality of life.
Mining in general I view as a somewhat neccesary evil that needs to made humane for workers and as something driven by unthinking consumption, the remedy lies upstream from mines in the mindsets of populations that demand resources.
Resource extraction can't be eliminated but it can be reduced, as should population numbers.
> If she wants a diamond despite knowing all the misery the diamond industry spreads, then you should probably just break up
Doesn't it matter what he thinks?
Does "If she wants to eat meat despite knowing all the misery the food industry spreads, then you should probably break up" sound like a good idea to a guy who isn't vegan/vegatarian/etc?
because I definitely want to spend the rest of my life with someone who's hypnotized by multi-generational marketing campaigns into wearing industrial abrasives as a status symbol. who wouldn't?
Diamonds were desirable jewelery way before anyone had the idea of using them in industry. It's true that the association with engagement rings is a new "tradition" invented by advertisers, but wearing diamond jewelery is not.
Not this level of worship, they were worn because they were shiny, and so were all the other precious stones, so was silver and gold. Diamonds had no real elevated value globally as jewelry before debeers marketing came along.
They were still being used as jewelry at that time, so even if their industrial use is older than I thought, the jewelery use is still much, much older than deBeers.
It's not about a diamond ring but what is behind that preference. Could be different things but some of them are a huge red flags. It's a lot better to marry someone that do not have that preference.
Can't tell if you're being sarcastic, but it definitely is a deal breaker for me. It speaks to someone's priorities. If they're more concerned about outdoing their girlfriends over cosmopolitans or worthless trinkets than the fiscal health of their family I don't want to start a family with them. And that's what this is all about right, family. I'd like to leave my kids with something significant and more than I was left with, so a partner that sees blowing thousands of dollars on frivolity and vanity as a positive is probably not a good match for me.
In reality even having a several "deal breakers" means you would need infinite options to find a match that doesn't have any of the so called deal breakers. Most guys don't get to pick from infinite, or even 10s of options. So you need to settle or stay single.
I get that, but I'm just pretty all or nothing. I wandered through the desert for a decade until I found mine. I was 100% willing to stay single the rest of my life rather than start a family with someone who wasn't good to start a family with. Luckily I didn't have to, I understand that that's not an option for many, but honestly I think most men could do better than they think they can, and I don't think enough men have a clear set of behavioral standards, enough foresight or self respect.
Or get her a pre-owned and/or lab-grown diamond which are insanely cheaper. While the cost of diamonds is pure marketing, I wouldn't want to pay thousands for something that is physically identical.
If the fact it's been on someone's finger before bothers her more than the potential conflict, slave labour, manipulation and underhanded trading, then I don't think a little white lie is a bad thing. Spend the money on something else
I would like to say, its all marketing. I sold my fiance on the idea that I spent a month shopping for the best cost-efficient but best looking deal on a ring, and settled on the one I got her, and that ended up being better than the presentation itself (she absolutely loves the ring).
Point is... marketing rules the world, programming just supports it.
Edit: To be fair, I showed her the other options and she likes the ring I got her on sale more than all the other options that were available. And she was very happy that the rest of the money was spent on us.
It's not like buying some other ring is that much better. We have 22ct gold rings but they are huge, heavy and don't fit very well anymore so they're easy to lose, so we never wear them. But we have them yay! At least it cost an order of magnitude less
> Not necessarily bad without knowing more about the parties involved. Some families are toxic and awful and should be cut off.
Maybe, but even in that case, you can't trust a spouse to do the cutting off because they are most definitely not unbiased.
If the cousin in question would have cut off ties without his wife telling him to, you might have a point, but the way the OP phrased it makes it seem, to me, that it was done due to instructions from the wife.
Certainly, and as a stranger on the internet I have no skin in the game, but "happy wife, happy life" is toxic poison that leads to deeply controlling relationships.
“Most” harmful? That’s an incredibly high bar for a pithy phrase where it’s easy to tell if someone is saying it to dismiss their partner’s feelings rather than be mindful of them.
It's definitely a cringy, antiquated phrase, but it doesn't seem harmful. People with wives should tie their own happiness to their wife's, shouldn't they?
It's not necessarily about manipulation, it's about not being codependent. If every time your partner is unhappy, you freak out, your ability to be a good partner is diminished. Couples need some buffer between their emotions to dampen extreme lows.
They are probably relating lived experience and we should listen.
The phrase isn’t “happy partners, happy life” and there is no “happy husband, happy life” equivalent that I’m aware of. It’s unbalanced, and if you have a partner that reciprocates, it must be confusing why the phrase is a problem. If you don’t, and you continually adhere to the phrase hoping they will until your health suffers, well we might reconsider our casual use of pithy sayings and their influence on children.
It’s clearly a divisive issue here but that usually means people have had a diversity of experiences around the topic.
I always thought it was an observation that people (often men) tend to underestimate how involved and intertwined in their lives their partners are. To these men, having a newly-happy wife improve their life seems like magic. To outside observers, it seems blatantly obvious that having the person you live with be happy will improve your life.
The happiest relationships result from both partners putting the other first. This forum is predominantly men. As a woman, I see variations on that "keep the hubby happy" phrase all over womens' spaces. So yeah. Some equality here is a little refreshing.
I am getting tired of this default perspective that “it’s about time men got around to this.”
Anecdotally I’ve never read or heard the male term IRL so I decided to check the phrases on Google trends.
Direct comparison of both full phrases shows that “keep the hubby happy” essentially doesn’t exist:
Funny that you cherrypick a single phrase that I actually made up, because I was generalizing, and use its unpopularity to insinuate that sexism never existed.
Above I'm comparing "happy husband" to "happy wife" because it includes searches for the phrase "happy wife happy life" and I don't know of a similar rhyming phrase involving husband and I want the comparison to be apples-to-apples.
I didn’t insinuate anything about sexism never existing.
I also didn’t cherry-pick anything, I used the exact phrase you said you’d heard all over women’s spaces.
The data you show are based on broad terms that would be difficult to ascribe to any causes or uses as they could just as likely be a reflection of men’s increasingly poor mental health — “why isn’t my husband happy” or the increase in relative participation of wives in Google searches.
Sexism is rampant. I had just hoped the incoming matriarchy would be more compassionate than the previous patriarchy. It isn’t looking good so far.
Key point, the effort must be mutual. Putting your partner first at your detriment should be an intolerable proposition to your partner. In all things, moderation.
> it's more that the expectation that husbands exist to serve their wives
We have no precedent for this in modern times. Instead, diamond coöpted the dowry’s role in assuring a bride’s family stability in a world that diminished women.
> do you really think a phrase meaning "keeping your husband happy and satisfied would make your life better" is not harmful?
No. Making my friends, colleagues, co-workers and life partner happy makes me happy. If it doesn’t, they shouldn’t be in my life, or I need to adjust my relationship to civilisation.
With complete honesty, the best money I have spent has been experiences with close friends.
"Be honest, do you really think a phrase meaning 'keeping your husband happy and satisfied would make your life better' is not harmful?" It's one of the oldest and best pieces of relationship advice in human history. What the heck is wrong with it?
The reality is the person with lower leverage in the relationship does the keeping of the one with higher leverage happy. In marriages men have the lower leverage due to various reasons. One of which is favorable treatment of women in the family courts.
> If you’re thinking about marriage in terms of leverage you’ve guaranteed you’re going to find out about those courts.
The reality is that in every relationship (whether marriage, business, friend, sibling, whatever) one person will have more leverage than the other.
That's not the problem. The problem is when the party with the leverage uses it! The phrase "happy wife, happy life" is problematic because it normalises the usage of this leverage.
(And if you think women have all the leverage in the average relationship, just wait till you get to over 45 and the kids are all old enough).
Given that marriage is a business decision, it's absolutely important to be aware of the positions you could possibly end up in, and which situations each of you has society's favor in should a conflict arise. (hint: men are disfavored in family court by default) It's not always happier ever after.
We should not normalize people making rash decisions and chaining themselves to someone to fulfill cultural fantasies about romance. Don't marry someone you're not willing to walk to the grave with.
Maybe I misunderstand the wording as non-native speaker, but I prefer making myself happy, and then happiness spreads on its own further, no real effort required. Also its the easiest person to get happy since I know quite well what I want.
I've heard my share of unhappy comments from mothers that sacrificed their life completely for the kids without thinking about themselves at all, and its not coming back.
In similar vein as in plane losing pressure - first help yourself and then help the others (kids in this case but I still like this comparison)
> if you apprise your fiancé of the alternatives / opp costs
What a romantic! I recommend not apprising your fiance of anything, but working to understand them and make your engagement as joyful and loving as possible.
> I made it clear though that if I got this, she is not getting a new one for a long time (she has a tendency to want to rent / sample / change things up).
Is she 12 years old? Is it legal to marry someone that age? :) I hope she said, 'oh, yes dear, whatever you say', and went out and bought another the next day.
But I'm guessing you didn't say actually that to your spouse. I hope you said something like, 'I'm a bit worried about our budget for such things'. Unless it was for your engagement, and then I hope you didn't say a thing.
> Guys, buying diamonds, can complain all day about what a rip off it is (it is).
People buy similarly useless crap all the time, like cars that are more expensive than they need. Why is her preference any less legitimate, why does it need any more excuse, than any other? The only argument I see is, it's not your preference.
She can have a preference, and he can preference on whether or not he buys it for her.
A purchase that is solely ceremonial and build on outdated cultural mores does merit a rational discussion about expenses and alternatives. To entertain the notion that such things shouldn't even be discussed because engagements are "oh so special" is silly. Cultural shaming shouldn't keep people from having reasonable discussions, especially when it's a purely ceremonial, psychological purchase, rather than something practical both partners could get value out of.
> A purchase that is solely ceremonial and build on outdated cultural mores does merit a rational discussion about expenses and alternatives. To entertain the notion that such things shouldn't even be discussed because engagements are "oh so special" is silly.
You're asking the wrong questions and giving the wrong answers to them.
Wrong questions: Those things don't matter in a serious, mature relationship, or are a low priority. The question is, what does your partner think? If it's important to them, then it's important. QED. That's because you care about your partner infinitely more and everything else is bullshit.
Wrong answers: If it's not important to your partner, then you discuss it. But you're still wrong: The correct answer is not to bother with the discussion, but to make sure your partner feels listened to, respected, and supported. Make sure you feel that way too, or your relationship will eventually bomb.
More wrong answers: If all of the above is done, and there's still room to discuss it, go for it. But you are still wrong: My impression is that you and the GGP seem to think that your opinions (and the grand HN consensus) are truths. Your opinion is just one limited take on reality.; your partner will have their own take, and, crucially: it's completely independent of you and your judgment; you have no business evaluating it; you just accept it. You listen, be curious about their take - give them space and time, because when you cut people off with your opinion, you actually never hear theirs (a widespread mistake of the arrogant, trapping them in ignorance). You take it in, challenge your own ideas. Then, finally, you are right to express yourself.
It’s pretty clear how existential of a threat lab-grown diamonds have become to the traditional diamond industry. Today you can buy a lab-grown diamond for ~$550 that’s equivalent to the $4500 natural diamond or $400 moissanite mentioned in that article.
So that's a -28%, and assuming no change between 2006 and 2008, this does seem to fit the recent drop in 0.5 to 1 carat prices seen on the chart ? (Note that all of the drops happened since early 2022.)
Meanwhile, the lab grown equivalent is around $1.6 k :
More interestingly, looking at diamonds that aren't crap (why would you settle for that when it's their optical properties that you are after ?), you have in the same size of 6.5 mm :
(Clarity doesn't seem to matter that much, because it has not much effect as long as it can't be seen to the naked eye, which in these except the worst one it probably won't be ? https://beyond4cs.com/clarity/ )
Diamonds aren't cut equal - imagine getting glasses that don't fit well your prescription.
All the sellers I have seen so far but White Flash seem to at best have a tiny, monocolor «Hearts & Diamonds» logo - which makes it hard to judge for yourself. And at this point the prices are low enough that it doesn't seem to make sense to settle for less if your goal is something like an engagement ring.
I don't know, maybe I am exaggerating the importance of this - (and maybe moissanite or even cubic zirconium would actually make for even better optical properties) - but it does seem like that diamond buyers are overwhelmingly getting taken advantage of : https://beyond4cs.com/truth-about-gia-triple-excellent-diamo...
I was interested enough from this article that I was willing to try to find out by myself (including comparing with similar crystals) - but annoyingly White Flash is US based and doesn't export to my country.
Fun fact: when my wife and me got married, we went to the flea market and got ourselves two simple silver rings that cost us about $5 each and that was it (we were both kinda broke at the time). 15 years later, we're still wearing the same rings.
My wife thinks little of diamonds. So when we got engaged I gave her a ring set with an emerald my grandfather got in Colombia in the 50s and that my grandmother and mother wore.
Turns out all those warm fuzzies are generally cancelled out by the likelihood that our emerald is as bloody as any diamond. The story of emerald trafficking in Colombia is dark.
And... not buying a gold chain today will reanimate how many fallen Aztec warriors?
(I'd never question your own choice to not buy it on those grounds, but proselytizing it seems to imply there are some stakes here that make it worth encouraging "everybody" to take up the same cause, and I just don't see how it matters.)
What I don't understand is how De Beers hasn't gone bankrupt yet :
> According to industry estimates, the average one-carat flawless diamond had fallen in value by 50 percent since January of 1980. In March of 1980, for example, the benchmark value for such a diamond was $63,000; in September of 1981, it was only $23,000.
> Diamond:
Via Blue Nile: 1.00-Carat Round, Very Good-cut, I-color, and VS1-clarity diamond comes accompanied by a diamond grading report from the GIA.
Price: $4,565
I have never understood the obsession with even having rings or a ceremony to begin with. My wife was my wife prior to a judge legally marrying us (and only because my mother-in-law didn't want our children to be bastards). If for whatever reason the government "dissolves" our marriage, it doesn't change anything between us. It's a token formality.
Fortunately, my wife agreed wholeheartedly and we used the obligate ceremony to invite our two favorite people and leveraged the "it's our wedding" card to force them away from their jobs so we could eat Chinese food and play board games with them.
Is there anything more to it than social jockeying and prestige?
Check out lab grown diamonds. Ethically way better than dirt diamonds, and the price is like 1/5 as well. They also don't have the (solely in my opinion) chintzy sparkle of moissanite.
Shout out to Friendly Diamonds for a recent purchase. My spouse knocked the center stone out of her wedding ring. Ordered a much larger, much (much much much) higher quality in terms of cut color and clarity, and WAY cheaper lab diamond from them.
Look for antique diamonds using older cuts, they're much less sparkly than the modern "brilliant" diamond cut. Plus being antique you're just supporting the antique jewelry business, the cartel already took their cut.
I bought my wife an absolutely beautiful moissanite handmade ring on Etsy for a fraction of the price a real diamond would cost, and she’s been very happy with it. Not only does it look great, she has a tendency to leave rings lying around the house and forget where they are, so it’s not a panic-inducing event if she should happen to lose it.
On Etsy, I see some 2 ct equivalent rings in sterling for as low as $40. Loose cut stones for as low as $7.50.
However, being in the market myself, I do think for a nice setting and stone you will pay $500-$1,500 for them if looking or certain cuts (kite cut as an example), sets, or styles.
That the diamond industry has convinced people that the amount of money you spend show the worth of your love?
Tell you what, I can set up a website that sells moissanite for 10x their retail price if you like. Give me a day to set up a Square account and you can buy from me.
That place always confused me. I was like, "So what's this stuff made of? Uh huh, okay, and why exactly are these tchotchkes and brooches and stuff worth this much?"
I mean it is, but you can break it trivially as an individual. There's no network effect, actually there's an anti-network effect. My partner and I were patient zero for non-diamond rings in our social sphere. I got alexandrite and she got a green sapphire. The rings are stunningly gorgeous, unique, nothing at all like you would find at at Zales or whatever and less than half the price (which is good since we needed two :P)
Our friends and family were obsessed and not six months later I got a text from a now engaged friend who wanted to know how we found them. He also opted for a green sapphire because it matched her eyes.
Non-diamond rings sell themselves, someone (and it can be you) just needs to break the seal.
Proof of commitment can have utility. And status symbols can have utility.
(Going on a tangent: compare Bitcoin's proof-of-work, which also has utility. Of course, that doesn't mean diamonds nor proof-of-work are the best bang-for-buck. For the latter, you can use proof-of-stake or avoid cryptocurrencies altogether. For the former, there are plenty of other social arrangements that avoid diamond rings.)
Yes, but giving something worthless but expensive is not a real tangible proof of commitment. "Here is something I paid too much for" is less meaningful than "here is something very valuable." Something valuable says if you are bad to her you'll lose out and she will have something to show for the commitment she reciprocated, something expensive that isn't valuable says I'll behave how you want to keep you around.
In India they give gold jewelry, that makes a lot of sense. Their cultural reasoning about it is very different (it's a financial investment that ties families together) but the act is better IMO.
There's many clear reasons why people want a diamond, and even an angle like "I want to follow society's expectations" is to me far from being irrational when you're prepping yourself to build a whole life with someone else.
A couple can discuss these matters and come up with alternative paths, people are referencing other materials and I'd include not buying anything fancy and save up for the first payment of their home for instance. But brides requesting a diamond is usually far from lacking rationale.
I agree. For reference, by irrational I mean that it goes against a utilitarian calculation as proposed by the linked article. I don’t mean that it’s “dumb” or lacking any reasoning.
I'm totally onboard - this is nonsense! What's annoying though is because moissanite is cheaper, you can't get a premade platinum ring with a moissanite stone.
I understand that diamonds are the kind of Veblen goods for which people are willing to spend a lot of money because they are expensive, in a logic-defying circular way, and that the presence of a cartels- makes prices artificially high, but there are still two things that I can never wrap my head around:
1) That if someone wants to sell a used diamond, they get pennies on the dollar. It's reasonable that they would sell at a small discount compared to wholesale prices, because of the extra work of authenticating it, the small volume etc., but the difference is so great that one assumes that some businesses would step in and take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity
2) That there is any difference at all in prices between mined and lab-grown diamonds. They are literally the same material, and lab-grown diamonds are as "real"as the mined ones
Just consider gold. You can sell used gold at a small discount compared to spot prices, and if there was a cheap way to make "lab grown" gold, I am sure it would sell at exactly the same price as mined gold
Yes, we got used 1920s (or 40s, I forget which) diamond matching (engagement/wedding) rings from a local jewellery market for ~5% of the cost of the equivalent spec ring if it were new. It was in immaculate condition and my wife adores them still 15 years later.
Honestly, second hand diamond and other gemstone jewelry seems like such a missed opportunity. I feel like people would go for it, with the new focus on sustainability and what-not. I wonder why that's not a thing?
But that doesn't dictate how much you're supposed to be paying for each individual diamond. If you have a "proof of love" budget of $6000 you could just buy five used diamonds instead. You could then start an arms race with other married couples and claim they don't love their spouses, because they only bought them a single diamond.
Edit: I checked and multi diamond cluster rings look way more impressive and make single diamond rings look cheap and icky.
"Used things are for poor people" - they know their market well and don't even have to actively diminish used diamonds/rings value, their customers do it for them.
It can feel like a bad luck kind of thing. Basically the only reason someone would have to sell their wedding rings are divorce or some other downturn. And don't want to invite bad luck by buying it.
Similar to not buying clothing from someone deceased or a wedding dress from someone divorced.
Can argue that this is not very rational. But much about the wedding process isn't :)
> Basically the only reason someone would have to sell their wedding rings are divorce or some other downturn.
That's why your shop should only sell the weddings rings from people who had a long and successful marriage and died peacefully in their sleep at age 95.
I don't think people who insist on diamonds care about how they are sourced. After all the blood diamond thing didn't stop anyone. What people want is to be skillfully lied to.
The blood diamond thing stopped a lot of people. I’d say it was the primary reason people pointed to when they passed on diamonds. Now almost all the diamonds you buy are expressed certified as conflict free.
Just gotta market it right. Maybe section off by length of marriage and dissolved by death or divorce.
A 60 year marriage, ended by death of one spouse shouldn't be unlucky. Especially if it was actually the death of both spouses in some tragically romantical way.
My wife wears my great grandmother's ring. I thought that she would not be interested but was elated when I discussed the option. When I was talking about marriage with my parents my mom mentioned that she had a couple rings I would be welcome to, but then mentioned: "one is from a very long and happy marriage, that would probably be best, the other...".
How? You don't usually buy diamonds for yourself, so the person who understands the diamonds are a scam does not have to be the same person who is attracted to diamonds.
It’s far more common for people to collaborate on purchases like this than to surprise each other: you could go so far to say that people choose diamonds for themselves.
Even a used one will be priced pretty high. Paid 400 or so for a used one, then immediately took it to someone else to verify it's real...they offered 75 for it(I didn't ask, she just said how much she'll pay for it).
If you're racking up wives, all the more reason to save money. Alternatively, I could imagine a new wife becoming quite upset upon learning that her engagement ring was from a pawn shop...possibly upset enough to leave!
That's the whole idea. There is no secondary market for diamonds - it's not a scarce resource. Scarcity is completely artificial, combined with decades of marketing campaigns.
"Diamonds are forever". Yeah, they are - because once you buy it, you can't really sell it to break even, let alone make a profit. Gold has natural market price fluctuations at least.
No, there has to be a secondary market somewhere because professional diamond theft is a thing. So they have to be able to fence the diamonds somewhere. And this isn't a small time thing, either; there have been a few diamond heists in the past couple of decades in the tens of millions of dollars/pounds/euros each, involving serious professional criminals.
It's because diamonds are mostly untraceable. If you steal it, nobody can tell if a diamond sold 2 years ago was at one point stolen or not.
But actual diamond jewellery is mostly priced like artwork. The worth of the actual separate components has very little to do with the price of the item.
(Clarity doesn't seem to matter that much, because it has not much effect as long as it can't be seen to the naked eye, which in these except the worst one it probably won't be ? https://beyond4cs.com/clarity/ )
Gold jewelry is very easily an investment. The artisan work on them only increases the cost by 10-15% on the underlying value of the gold (at least in India).
Gold, just gold, is an investment simply because people value it - it's a shiny noble metal that stays "pure", ergo percieved value.
From a resource utility PoV it costs more to source than copper or aluminium which are nearly as conductive - so they win out for electronic and power transmision applications.
There are applications where gold is the clear winner - "forever" circuits and switches that are worth the extra cost to have contacts that never corrode, space tech, etc.
But the reality is that the vast vast majority of gold mined gets turned into bullion and horded (my precious!!) or played with a little and worn as jewellry.
I've been in and around the gold mining industry for decades, I'm not a hater - but it's easily one of the most valuable useless things we spend vast amounts of energy on gathering.
Being a good store of value, is itself - a value. It's not entirely arbitrary because you need quite a lot of characteristics to make it fit. It needs to be relatively widespread to encourage widespread acceptance of its value (rather than just granting Goldland a defacto king-maker style monopoly on wealth, which nobody beside allies of Goldland would recognize), relatively scarce so you're not requiring hundreds of tons of it to cover even a moderate national level transaction, it needs to be safe to handle, stable, solid at any practical temperature, and somehow relatively easy to verify the authenticity of. I can't really think any other element that fits the bill as nicely as gold.
Put another way, if we look at all the parallel realities of Earth, even prior to the discovery of gold, I suspect the overwhelming majority of them would end up using it as a major store of value. It's just really perfect for it! We may even find alien civilizations, assuming a comparable elemental distribution to Earth, doing the same!
Depends what culture you’re in. Work gold jewelry gives you a lot of social cache in India so it is worn all the time. Additionally it’s used as a mode to transfer wealth across generations with jewelry giving mandated in the cultural milieu.
if you're part of a culture that values gold then gold has percieved value .. otherwise it's not especially useful
(in that other elements have similar properties and are cheaper to bulk source, with few applications that benefit uniquely from gold).
'Useful' being the pragmatic sense, food, shelter, clothing are neccesary, concrete and steel are useful, copper is useful, gold is (mainly) hoarded and shown off.
Gold is somehow universally adored by humans. It’s not just the Indians, different, unconnected civilizations throughout history have given it a vaunted status in their society completely independently. Hence it is pragmatically a good store of value because it taps into a universal, instinctual appreciation for it.
Currently the US government holds 8,134 metric tons of gold in reserves. You can call it "hording" (whatever that means) but clearly someone thinks it's worth keeping half a trillion dollars worth of the country's money in it.
i would imagine the most powerful democracy in the world would have a better approach to structuring the reserves than "storing them in a chaotic manner"?
It's not very significant (by most definitions of the word), a typical physics | engineering quote is:
The electrical conductivity of copper is slightly higher at 5.96 x10^7 S/m than gold which is 4.11×10^7 S/m. More importantly is the lifespan of the two metals. Copper has a high oxidation level. So, if installed in an unstable environment (such as outside), it will fail sooner than gold.
They're close (which is how I misordered the two) with the corrosion Vs non corrosion of copper V. gold being a factor in switch contact lifespans - typically high copper alloys with lower oxidation rates are used.
It is significant enough that you would need a thicker wire for many applications. Gold's corrosive properties are often useful and it conducts well enough, though even then gold is used as much because of "gold" when something else cheaper would work good enough.
That's a rather steep premium in my opinion and you'll also be penalized when you try to sell it, because small quantities, individual appraisal, and additional cost to the buyer if its fate is to be melted down and refined.
In exchange for all that, you get a physical object that can be lost, damaged, or stolen.
If you're going to invest in gold, it seems like a poor way to do it.
Jewelry can be an investment, or a way to save capital. Gold jewelry is pretty good for that, actually rare gemstones (as opposed to diamonds) can also be, silver is alright in this regard.
Basically all jewelry is a scam if you look at it as an investment.
From people that I observed over the years I saw people who had low self esteem mostly that would pull up with loads of jewelry.
There are also people who like it as small accents but I don't think they do it because it is worth something but more like they just like it and that's fine.
Yeah. I'm glad I figured this one out before getting married. They have no real value. They do look nice and are great for grinding metal. But they aren't rare. The value has always been completely managed. And the notion that you spend a lot on a ring is so insidious.
Seems like a reasonable conjecture that stretches the meaning of the word rain.
Naomi Rowe-Gurney: So I mentioned methane being the reason why these two planets are blue. Well, methane has carbon in it and that carbon can occur by itself and also be crushed by the immense pressures that happen, like, deep in the atmosphere, so much deeper than the levels that I look at. And inside the planet, when it gets really hot and really dense, these, these diamonds form and accumulate, and then they become even heavier. And that means that they kind of rain down in the atmosphere. But it’s not the rain that we see here because these pressures are extreme, and you’ll never be able to get there as a human. So even if these diamonds do exist, we would never be able to go and grab them. So… unfortunately.
The origin of diamond engagement rings was insurance: with the decline of "breach of promise" suits, the fiancée at least had something to sell as a settlement if the fiancé reneged on the promise of marriage.
All of that nonsense is long gone; the fetish for engagement rings is just a residual and empty metaphor. Good riddance.
My US gf was astonished and dubious that my relatives (in various other countries) didn't have diamond engagement rings, or engagement rings at all.
This was really never true though. Second hand diamonds have been incredibly cheap compared to retail for a long time. Good luck reselling that engagement ring, the pawn shop has a box overflowing with them.
Thats exactly my point: the whole infrastructure of breach of promise, (somewhat) rarity of diamonds etc has been obsolete for decades, almost a century in the US. Any point of an expensive engagement ring has not had practical value in living memory. Just a residual, empty practice.
Every aspect of a wedding outside of the government paperwork is without practical value. It's almost like the practical value isn't the only thing that matters.
Another way of thinking about it is that a wedding itself is a public commitment you’re making in front of witnesses (so in theory harder to back out of — not a bad idea as it provides some hysteresis to overcome transient conflicts).
Meanwhile the government is simply providing some infrastructure as a service to people who want to make such commitments.
Nitpick, not diamond engagement rings. It was valuable engagement rings, it didn't have to be diamonds. The PR men created the diamond specific thing, and gutted the entire meaning of the tradition.
I bought my partner's diamond and wedding ring set before we were hip to the shenanigans around diamonds. We had the ring melted down to make a pendant for our child with the diamond (which they'll receive when they're an adult) and no longer wear wedding rings (mine was a ~$20 tungsten ring from Amazon luckily). Thousands of dollars wasted in hindsight.
Hot take: Diamonds are scams, don't buy them! Take a trip, buy a house, start an investment account instead.
I feel like if you're in a situation where you're reduced to bartering with someone with your gold wedding ring, chances are reasonably high that you're also in a situation where you don't get a say in whether they take your gold wedding ring.
Nah, I checked with the local fire department before buying. They’ll apply directed force and fracture the ring to remove it in an emergency. A friend is an electrical lineman, so digit safety is top of mind.
The market has changed drastically since some Chinese factories start mass producing synthetic diamonds around 2019.
Currently in the end market the price is $200~300 for a 1CT synthesized one, and the quality are simply better all around. The only way to distinguish natural ones is to track from the start where each is mined and processed, which is a bit absurd.
Many of these factories were associated with drill head industry and the like until they found the jewelry market is much more profitable and got the trick to mass-produce them.
If they are willing to compete a bit the price might even go lower.
It's 40 minutes, but if you're looking to buy a high quality cut gemstone, this will give you a fantastic overview of all the considerations that separate trash from art.
About halfway through the video there's a good glimpse of the software and hardware used for grading, which is fascinating to see. It's all about optimizing the cuts so that the maximum amount of light is directed where it should go.
"Radical steps" include all the tricks that a multi-national monopoly would pull, and yet no one is doing anything about it. I hope diamond prices crash and the entire industry goes up in flames, it's corrupt and it's ugly.
From my Dutch perspective, American weddings as well as the prestigious ring is astonishing to see. It's like an industry.
When my brother married, they went to the city council and signed a document. Later that night they threw a party in their own garden.
Probably didn't even spend 1K in costs, and everybody had a fantastic time and is still talking about it 20 years later. It really was a special day and they're a happy couple.
Just saying, you don't need all this garbage. It's about the people, not the stuff.
It is an industry in the US, for sure, but also, plenty of people in the US do minimal weddings like you describe. I'd be surprised, though, if lots of Dutch people didn't have big expensive weddings as well.
The thing I'm trying to say is that it wasn't a minimum wedding or not experienced as such. Everybody had a blast, was well taken care of, great food, unlimited drinks. Nothing felt minimum or cheap about it.
I used to live in Antwerp, Belgium, the self-proclaimed diamond capital of the world. Lodewyk Van Bercken, some 15th century dude who was able to cut diamonds to their stereotypical shape, used to live here.
In 2023, the city seems to think that diamonds are cool, with a diamond museum, public transport stops named after diamonds, tax cuts and promotions. In reality, however, it's mostly a bunch of very shady looking shops, the occasionally robbery, embargoed Russian imports, and a fair bit of crime. It's entirely unclear why the city is so seemingly proud and obsessed with diamonds.
Instead of realising that this trash is worthless, and this industry would be better off dead, they're spending money on tracing systems (an actual block chain implementation!), including microscopic laser etchings to identify diamonds.
So, why isn't NATO forcing the collapse? Russia is sitting on the largest stockpile of diamonds, they have the most to lose. We can already synthesize these things, might as well let the price reflect the actual value.
The whole diamond market absolutely is a scam, you'd think it would violate some anti-trust laws of some sort but apparently no, everything is "legal"... go figure.
You can buy "quantum radiation remover stickers" on eBay, have been there for years. Apple stores get overnight queues of people on release dates. Homeopathy is paid for by the German public health system.
You can buy lots of "quantum radiation remover" and "negative ion quantum shield" products which purport to create negative ions and shield you from radiation on all platforms. Most of them do actually generate ions if you measure air around them with a legitimate calibrated ionometer. But of course, that takes energy. Where is a rock or a sticker going to obtain the energy to constantly ionize the air around it? Radioactivity, of course. Most of them are radioactive. And not the fun kind of radiation, not like, microwaves. No, it's the full range of inherent radioactivity the world of unstable nuclides can provide! And people plaster these on their clothing and wear them as amulets all day.
Pretty sure most of them have nothing to do with radionuclides, not even in smoke detector quantities. It's just a silly sticker that can't work by definition, yet is somehow legal enough for eBay not to remove them en masse.
> Homeopathy is paid for by the German public health system.
It's worth noting that "anthroposophic medicine" (not just homeopathy) while paid for by the German public health care system is explicitly treated differently than actual medicine. There's a lot of "alternative medicine" treatments that are covered by German public health insurance but they're explicitly considered "treatments" not "cures". This entails a different standard of evidence: anthroposophic "medicine" only needs to demonstrate an absence of harm whereas actual medicine needs to empirically demonstrate a balance of positive effects and negative side-effects. Anthroposophic "medicine" sometimes cites studies involving self-reported effects but the health claims are strictly controlled, you can't e.g. claim your sugar pills cure cancer just because there's a bogus self-report study indicating cancer patients felt better with it.
I'm not defending the coverage of "alternative medicine" by health insurance. Customers should be able to easily understand whether the product the pharmacy is selling them is an actual medical drug or just an expensive filler or a "natural remedy" with no demonstrated health effects - and ideally the latter shouldn't be sold in pharmacies (or at all) to begin with and certainly not with (implied) health claims.
But thanks to German consumer protection laws there is a line for what claims you can get away with and which ones will get you sued. It's not as tight as I'd like it, but it's there and it has an effect, unlike homeopathy. In other words: while "quantum radiation removal" is hard to even evaluate as a claim as it's entirely made up woo, selling "quantum radiation remover stickers to prevent cancer and AIDS" (or selling stickers that are unsafe and will cause cancer if used as intended) crosses an important line turning the latter illegal in Germany.
>On 4 November 2011, Anglo American plc and CHL Holdings announced their agreement for Anglo American to acquire an incremental interest in De Beers, increasing Anglo American's 45% shareholding in the world's leading diamond company to 85%.
Anglo American is publicly traded with all it entails.
Actually, diamonds, the industrial type, are very useful. Many industries use diamonds for cutting and drilling. As far as I know, there is no alternative, at the same price point. But they are sold at a fraction of what they sell for jewelry.
Copper has superior mechanical properties for its applications than gold would. Gold is plated on contacts not just for its conductivity but bc it won’t oxidize.
Mica is easier to work with than diamond as well as being cheaper.
Both gold and diamond have exotic uses. Diamond is common as an abrasive but no need for clear ones for that application.
A Needless Pedanticism, that is only technically correct if you mean gold that won’t kill you
We can make gold in the lab.
It’s radioactive gold but still gold.
Edit, actually i think in the 1980s Seaborg might have created stable gold out of bismuth, but just might have. The articles aren’t mentioning which isotope was created so I don’t know. Mercury to gold is radioactive isotopes, which is the one I’d known about.
Buy Whatever you like! On a Maslows scale of humans needs. Jewellery is in Self Esteem, or in some cases Self-Actualisation step, so If you want buy diamonds if you don't want don't buy diamonds. Tbh I'm kinda tired to see this COSMO type rants on the front-page of hacker news.
There was a time when diamonds were rare. That's not the case anymore. What's amazing is how successful de beers controlled the supply and, by effect, the price. They completely controlled it for at least 80 years. Looks like man-made diamonds finally broke the weakening lock and I doubt they will ever regain it. Eventually, they will fall to the point of cost of making or mining them plus a small margin. Name brands will be able to charge a premium but not what was possible when they had a monopoly. They are luxury items in the same way a designer bag is so don't expect to get your money back.
Aluminum was once rare too. It was considered a precious metal. The obelisk at the Washington Memorial is capped with Aluminum... I've heard stories that it was used for engagement rings in that era as well!
Diamonds are worthless, but reject them at your own peril. When my friend proposed to his girlfriend of 3 years, because the ring didn’t have a diamond she said no.
Sorry for your friend, but that is a discussion you have to have at least danced around a little. Like which cut and whether she really cares about it. I'd say he dodged a bullet if she dumped him outright over that. I could understand a polite "no I don't like that ring, try again", but treating that like a deal breaker, wow.
Oh damn nvm your friend is going to get fleeced first in credit card bills and then in divorce court. He got a proper ring instead of preserving his self respect and getting himself a proper wife.
> Diamonds are worthless, but reject them at your own peril. When my friend proposed to his girlfriend of 3 years, because the ring didn’t have a diamond she said no.
Sounds like your friend dodged a bullet there.
(I proposed to my now-wife without a ring. After she said yes, we went shopping for one).
If you think about it, a ring is just as unneeded as a diamond. The situation is that a diamond ring has become a social norm. I would bet that if you ask most women whether they want a diamond engagement ring or another type of rock, they will pick the diamond ring by an overwhelming majority. Imagine a woman telling others about their engagement and showing a rock other than a diamond. It would be a disappointment any way you see it. The "diamonds are a scam" reason just won't cut it. The diamond industry has been extremely successful at planting that notion in society.
I and most of my friends (late 20s to early 30s) have non-diamond engagement rings. The consensus is that diamonds are outdated, exploitative, and scammy. I also think they’re not as pretty/eye-catching as my lab-grown emerald.
I thought that lab-grown emeralds were more expensive than diamonds.
If that is true, then buying something more expensive than the usual thing doesn't invalidate any of the arguments against diamond engagement/wedding rings.
If emeralds are cheaper, then while I'd rather have the emerald anyway (it's prettier to my eyes), I can't see any person (male or female) preferring the cheaper jewelry.
My ring is vintage, the lab-grown emerald replacing whatever stone it used to hold. I imagine that brought down the price. My preference generally is for well-kept vintage jewelry. Beyond thriftiness, there’s an extra charm to wearing something loved by someone before you :)
"Should we spend $X of our now common budget on a ring, or spend $Y < $X on a ring and buy a nicer car/pay out the house faster/add some more to the kids college fund?"
If she says "the ring" to that, consider a replacement.
These threads are always great for men posting about how their wives love the imitation stones “just as much” and “I didn’t foolishly spend money.”
As always, if it worked for your marriage, it worked, but many of us can sniff out a fake from across the room. And it will always look tacky and cheap and she will be wearing it, in theory, the rest of her life.
I have visited exactly one jeweler in my life that set man made stones into quality precious metal settings. Every moissanite I’ve seen has been in the same plated stuff that gets cut glass or cubic zirconia or the like.
I get a better ring for the price and people who talk about “sniffing out fakes” because in their mind conspicuous consumption creates social value will avoid me.
Nobody can tell a lab grown diamond vs real by eye. They are the same. With the right lab equipment you might be able to tell the difference through some fluorescence or other very hard to perceive property. Honestly, what gives away lab grown diamonds is probably the lack of inclusions which mean they are "too" perfect.
> I have visited exactly one jeweler in my life that set man made stones into quality precious metal settings.
It is a shame that the free fall of price caused by the precipitous drop in consumer demand did not impact jewelers’ behavior. We must assume that high-end jewelers turned away customers wanting stones other than diamond and shut down their businesses over the past couple of years. The thought of moissanite or literally any stone other than diamond cannot be countenanced by quality jewelers (a group famous for not bending over backwards for money)
I've been married 17 years, and we got a mined diamond engagement ring in a quality setting and quality wedding bands, and I don't really regret it. But for various reasons, we stopped wearing the rings, and that's not uncommon. It is kind of silly to spend so much money on pretty symbolism, especially if it ends up on a ring holder or in a drawer.
If the alternatives look tacky and cheap, which I'm willing to admit they might, even if I can't tell... the rational choice is to skip the symbols all together, or maybe just simple, quality, not terribly expensive wedding bands.
Do you agree with the statement “a person with more money is inherently better than a person with less money”? What about the statement “money is distributed in a completely perfect, correct, and just manner”?
This is like the "have fun staying poor" argument crypto backers use but for diamonds. If I don't care about your opinion of what's "tacky" it has no effect.
So, now the synthetic diamond market looks like this.[1]
DeBeers has been frantically trying to stop the growth of the synthetic gemstone industry. (They lost on industrial diamonds decades ago; that's all synthetic and cheap.) DeBeers has an R&D program to develop test instruments. It is just barely possible at present to distinguish synthetic CVD (controlled vapor deposition) diamonds from real ones.[2] From that paper, it looks like some process improvement by the synthetic diamond makers could fix that. Detection involves exposing the diamond to a UV flash lamp, which makes diamonds fluoresce blue briefly, and examining the spectrum that comes back. Natural diamonds have a peak at 425nm, and some CVD synthetics have a peak at 435nm, at least for the ones tested.
There's a PR program for "natural diamonds". But there's also a PR program for synthetic diamonds.[3] The synthetics industry is gaining.
As an investment, diamonds are awful. They are really hard to sell.
[1] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/cvd-diamond.html
[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pssa.201800292
[3] https://www.cnn.com/style/lab-grown-diamonds-popularity-2023...