this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2024
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Whenever I think about the diamond market I think about the episode of the Twilight Zone where gold becomes worthless in the future because it's manufacturable.
As evidence by the diamond market, even if we could manufacture gold (somehow) even higher in quality than the purest gold available naturally, people would still want the, objectively worse, natural stuff, because for some reason the human rights violations that go into getting it makes it more valuable.
TL;DR: it's the child labor that makes it special
It's not a mystery reason. Its advertising. Billions upon billions of dollars, millions of man hours, Gigawatts of energy, landfills of brouchers and fliers and billboards - all hammering into you that these luxury tokens are worth the six or seven figure price tag that a retailer has placed on them.
It's propaganda of the must vile sort. The painful irony of it all is the absurd volumes spent to coerce people into these purchases relative to the skinflint labor practices used to dig the stuff out and manufacture it.
What do you mean "somehow"? All you need is elephant nerves.
I meant (somehow) more pure than the gold we have, which is already pretty pure. Plus pure gold isn't very useful in fashion because of how soft it is.
If we were to manufacture pure gold, I think it would probably be more useful in practical applications, like dentistry or something.
Can you tell I'm not an expert?
I know very little of gold, minerals in general, or metal, so we're on the same page there.
I was making a reference to the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. In it, the titular world is carried on the back of four elephants on the back of a turtle swimming through the cosmos. There used to be five elephants, but one fell off. The gravity of the world pulled it around in a circle and it crashed into the world, leaving the elephant's innards embedded in the ground. Because the elephant supported one fifth of a whole world, its body parts, especially structural components, were not composed of normal organic materials; its bones were of iron and its nerves of gold. In the lore of Discworld, the dwarves essentially mine the body of the elephant for precious materials.
Discworld has complex lore and is a great read. Has nothing to do with the real world, of course; but if any of the above sounds appealing, I strongly suggest reading it.
edit: I apologize if I presented my original comment in a way that made it seem I was correcting you. I was just being nerdy.
Oh. I figured you were making some kind of joke but I honestly had no idea what.
No worries. In many circles, Terry Pratchett is pretty esoteric. I'll never judge someone for not getting a reference.
You can make diamonds. The diamond companies convinced everyone they were inferior.
I do think the western world likes to support child labor. While else would your iPhone be so expensive? It is carefully assembled by child hands.
Hehe yeah, "Sure, you could buy perfect diamonds grown in lab conditions that are way prettier than anything we could offer for way cheaper, or you could buy our authentically dirty or broken diamonds to -prove- you paid way more money to anyone that looks close enough to notice. Won't they be jealous of how rich you were".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
The special ingredient is human suffering.
I think one of the most common talking points against lab grown is that they are too perfect. "It's the imperfections that are beautiful" or something like that.
That is just more propaganda. In the netflix program about it they show that they can't tell the difference.
The whole natural diamond thing is they want to control the volume of diamonds on the market. If you can make them, then there will be such a high production the prices will plummet. The only reason the price is high, is that they keep production low.
That sentiment they manufactured is exactly what I was, apparently inexpertly, lampooning.
In a certain way I even agree with the sentiment. Of the crystals I have grown myself, the perfect ones are kinda nice, but do look fake/more like plastic. Those that are nearly perfect but have visible impurities (not to much, not to little) are far more visually pleasing to me.
The big BUT is that this in no way is a reason to support blood diamonds. If aesthetic is more worthy to you than human rights, than you are a villain, it's that simple.
Yeah, as of aesthetic imperfections can't be grown in a lab.
Yeah it's the same as the people who are being oppressed by the corporatocracy voting for an oppressor because they just want to feel powerful by stepping on someone else. The "Slugs for Salt" group doesn't care if they are salted as long as the snails beneath them get salted and they get to feel like it's them doing the salting.