You seen me rant about those evil assholes before. Now there’s this:
Diamonds were once a girl’s best friend, according to Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 classic film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
But the boom of lab-grown rocks has upset traditional mining firms such as Anglo American, the owner of De Beers, the world’s leading diamond company, according to The Times.
The FTSE 100 company’s shares dropped by 20 per cent after it announced production cuts at its mines. Meanwhile, De Beers sold just $80million of rough diamonds at the end of October, compared with $454million a year earlier, BNN Bloomberg reported.
In comparison, the lab-created variety – regarded as more ethical and sustainable than those from mines – appears to be on the up; 10 per cent of diamonds sold in 2022 were lab-grown compared to only 2 per cent in 2018.
Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of corporate assholes.
I bought Wife 2.0 an engagement ring and wedding ring with lab grown diamonds. We got bigger, shinier, prettier stones for the same price as mined, and as a bonus it wasn’t mined by 12 year olds or slaves.
The lab grown rocks are so indistinguishable from natural diamonds, they etch them with microscopic serial numbers so skilled jewelers and appraisers can tell them apart.
Living my whole life with a skinny assed wallet, this sort of thing has not been much of an issue for me. In 1984 the wedding rings I bought for my future wife cost $100 and came from a store named “Service Merchandise” and she never knew the cost nor has she inquired. She hasn’t even worn them in almost 20 years and that doesn’t bother me. I’ve never worn rings and stopped wearing a watch about 1986. Come Feb 2024 I will have been dragging this ball n chain 40 years. I never knew hell would last this long. j/k
Doesn’t the hiring of children to work in the mines keep them off of the streets and out of mischief?
JQ
I remember a SciFi story from long ago related to this. Seems there was an asteroid mining installation being shut down by the corporate owners. Many of the inhabitants didn’t want to leave so they hatched a plan to claim the station as salvage once it was abandoned by the owners. Since they were no longer receiving supplies from the former owners things were getting desperate as they tried cobbling together the means to survive, made all the more difficult by the non-participation of one of the crew who was a brilliant engineer. Seems he had acquired a large fortune via nefarious means, had squirreled it away, and was just waiting for the statute of limitations to expire. One day he saw a news item which completely changed his attitude. He pitched in with a vengeance and with his dedicated effort the station survived ant thrived. At the end it’s revealed that the news item that changed things was that a method of creating synthetic diamonds had been created which were indistinguishable from natural ones and the market was now flooded; diamonds were a dime a dozen. The reluctant engineer, it turns out, had converted his ill gotten booty to diamonds which were now worthless thus prompting his change of heart.
Mr Kim.
I’ve heard you speak (well type) of your disdain for the diamond industry before. I think I know why, but don’t remember ever seeing a write up of the why behind the disdain. As someone closer to the action than the rest of us westerners, I would enjoy reading that.
I had an uncle who was a jeweler. He would complain about De Beers controlling the diamond market keeping the prices artificially inflated. He would take quarterly vacations to hit pawn shops for diamond earrings and solitaire rings. He could get stones for about half the cost of stones from De Beers. He would reuse some of the mounts but most got melted down.
Diamonds – A Girls’ Best Friend.
Diamonds Are Forever.
Diamonds – Take Her Breath Away.
Diamonds – Render Her Speechless.
Diamonds – That’ll Shut Her Up.