5 ms·

I personally fully agree, but unfortunately not everyone thinks as logically as you or I. I talked about this with my wife recently, and even though she had a

I personally fully agree, but unfortunately not everyone thinks as logically as you or I. I talked about this with my wife recently, and even though she had a vague idea of the horrors that mined diamonds bring, she'd still continue to buy/want mined diamonds. She sees mined diamonds as more "real", and finds it difficult to believe that her diamonds in particular would be part of the problem - as if it somehow would only affect diamonds purchased in dodgy, back-room deals. She seems to think it's OK because "everyone else does it". No amount of discussion of verifiable facts seems to change that view; indeed, she got quite annoyed with me, and didn't want to discuss it any further. A large part of the problem is conditioning, through both advertising and tradition. In the west, we are conditioned from an early age to believe that "diamonds are a girl's best friend", that women should accept nothing less that a "real" diamond, and that men should spend some silly multiple of their salary when buying such a diamond. Diamonds are synonymous with luxury. What we really need is a big, sustained campaign against mined diamonds, really putting the horrors in the faces of potential customers, so they have to accept the damage mined diamonds cause,and accept that they are part of the problem. Such a campaign probably needs to be fronted by celebrities - inspirational figures that people will listen to. I whole-heartedly applaud Pandora for making the first move here - hopefully this will help to break the stalemate and be the start of a much bigger movement.

kqr 6y ago
There's also a common line of reasoning that roughly goes "well this particular diamond has obviously already been mined, so no additional harm is caused by me wanting it." Obviously you and I see that even that line of reasoning alone jacks up demand for an awful business, but not all people have the capacity to reason that abstractly about how their behaviour plays a part in a very big aggregate. ---- My wife did get this after some discussion, but we got stuck with a different problem: we asked virtually every local jeweller to create something with a lab-created diamond (or even a different shiny rock entirely) and all of them -- to our astonishment -- refused. They only work with mined diamonds from the suppliers they have long-standing contracts with and can ensure are as ethical as they come. I'm sure they have their reasons but that was very frustrating.
- GordonS 6y ago
  > I'm sure they have their reasons I would guess it's profit, with mined diamonds being more expensive than engineered ones?
- r0ze-at-hn 6y ago
  > we asked virtually every local jeweller to create something with a lab-created diamond (or even a different shiny rock entirely) and all of them -- to our astonishment -- refused. ooooo now there is a signal. Putting in the time and effort to find/get a jeweller to make me a custom ring with a lab-created diamond when no one will. Unique, expensive. Not something he can just order from the internet. Because lets just cut to the chase. The diamond is all about the story, the signal and what it represents, not what it is.
- Nick87633 6y ago
  I've had jewelers make custom jewelry with stones I brought. Maybe you haven't found the right one yet.
- lastofthemojito 6y ago
  That's interesting - when I bought an engagement ring for my wife the one and only jewelry store I went to was happy to order me a bare ring, give me the size range of diamonds that would fit it, and then install the 3 synthetic diamonds I ordered from Gemesis. It seemed like installing diamonds that folks already owned into new rings was something they did relatively often. Maybe you'd have better luck approaching it that way - "I already have a diamond, what rings can you sell me that would fit it?" rather than "source me a synthetic diamond and put it in a ring for me". Although it looks like Gemesis, the company I bought the synthetic diamonds from, has pivoted and rebranded as Pure Grown Diamonds, and sells wholesale rather than retail now.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Were these chain jewelers? Did you bring the stone, or want to include that as part of the purchase?
adamhp 6y ago
I had a similar conversation and I think you're spot on with "conditioning". I don't even think it is about luxury, necessarily. It's literally just how middle class+ white women grow up in the United States. I can't necessarily fault someone for making those kinds of emotional choices after being bombarded with that idea their entire lives. Totally agree with your campaign idea too. I think a lot of it is social signaling and if there was enough of a big movement against them, diamonds would be "canceled" pretty quickly. Social pressure is one of the great guiding forces we have (for better and for worse).
hyperpallium2 6y ago
The solution is simple: make man-made diamonds more expensive than mined.
- GordonS 6y ago
  This is actually a great idea - either to make them more expensive, or to pressure governments to ban them outright, like has been done for ivory.
sopooneo 6y ago
My guess is that we need a sweeping, emotion-fill, romantic story toward something else, not just away from the current diamond-status quo. There certainly is a quiet satisfaction, and clear conscience, in avoidance of evil. But no joy in the act of NOT. A normal person who repeatedly throws aside a full heart in favor of facts will not wake up singing for many years. There needs to be a new song to replace the old, something as emotionally filling as DeBeers shadow demons dancing to a swelling string section.
- username90 6y ago
  That will be hard, women are much more conservative and care more about traditions than men.
  - bongoman37 6y ago
    Interesting that you are downvoted when what you are saying is quite true.
    - xmprt 6y ago
      It's downvoted because it's not true. There are tons of traditions that men follow too. Gender norms just lead to men and women following different traditions.
- rmah 6y ago
  This is quite insightful. I never thought of it this way but I think you are correct. If I could rephrase it a bit more clinically, the signaling of fitness (wealth, social status, etc) is important to the human mating rituals. And diamonds are integral to that in a some cultures. That underlying need is probably innate will not change. Therefore, as you said, you can't just say "NO", it needs to be replaced with something else.
- aksss 6y ago
  Dude.. people don’t think about who’s making their Nikes or Apple products or tshirts. They buy these incidental products with zero concern for the people producing them. How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. Getting people to care about who’s winning and losing in a production lifecycle seems like something that doesn’t get fixed initially with the diamond-buying crowd when the shoe-buying consumers don’t even care. I think what I’m struggling to get at is that the diamond-buying population at least have these earnest “noble ideals” of love, unity, etc represented by this product for which at some low level the sacrifice and blood may _add_ value (god knows what unconscious calculus is at work in the mind of a grown princess). Compare this to a pair of crap tennis shoes that you’re going to throw away, where they are completely utilitarian, replaceable, and you have zero emotional investment in what they represent. The suffering represented by the product offers nothing other than the blatant profit of the consumer. And we can’t wrest the shoes from the consumer’s hands no matter what is said about the abysmal conditions that produced them. All of these conditions in the production of these products are known. Nobody can claim ignorance in the first world. If the population at large hasn’t had a moment of moral clarity by now, I’m not sure I’d hold my breath any longer. Either systemically the culture needs to be more open to moral awakenings (a hard sell in a world defined by deconstructionism) or a new and acceptable critique of globalism at a policy level needs radical change. Just my .02 but I’ve been hearing the same convo about diamonds since I was a kid and it’s as sad as hearing the rationalizing of any addict.
exoque 6y ago
>In the west, we are conditioned from an early age to believe that "diamonds are a girl's best friend", that women should accept nothing less that a "real" diamond, and that men should spend some silly multiple of their salary when buying such a diamond. In the west, the US or the anglosphere? Because I only know this from Hollywood movies.
- GordonS 6y ago
  The west. I'm from the UK, and this mindset is common here. I've discussed this topic with others from various other European countries, and it seems to be widespread.
- EricE 6y ago
  Ha - Hollywood/Debears infected post-war Japan too: https://danwin.com/2010/08/how-de-beers-diamonds-won-over-the-japanese-and-everyone-else/ https://danwin.com/2010/08/how-de-beers-diamonds-won-over-th... The scope of their mass brain washing is indeed staggering. Heck I have a good friend in the jewelry business and we still get into heated discussions about how he feels there is nothing wrong and how he is providing value as an agent of Debears brainwashing. It is pretty disgusting.
seiferteric 6y ago
Markets tend to abstract away responsibility. Just look at rhino horn, elephant tusk buyers in Asia, I am sure it's a similar story. Most people think that if they are buying from a reputable company that it must be okay, some companies even market that (Brilliant Earth) and even they get in trouble though since the diamond market in general is shady.
tzs 6y ago
Partial solution: change product labeling laws /consumer protection laws/trademark laws/etc to have an exception for diamonds that allows all diamonds regardless of origin to be labeled as natural and/or mined diamonds.
swat535 6y ago
> I personally fully agree, but unfortunately not everyone thinks as logically as you or I. Yes they don't because of marketing. If we want to really change this, the narrative, the media and marketing has to change from: Earth Diamonds = Status of eternity and "foreverness" to Earth Diamonds = Status of child abuse. With massive campaigns from media and celebrities, people can be shamed into changing their behaviour. We need to stop treating women as children and objects to be "bought out" with diamonds and gifts. The days of women needing men to "provide" for them are long gone. But I digress.. more to your point, just because something is a tradition, it doesn't mean we should throw our hands up and accept the status quo. Change requires bravery.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bsanr2 6y ago
More fundamentally: we're conditioned to privilege our ambitions (or maybe just grand ambitions in general) over things like concern for the horrific-yet-ultimately-banal suffering that enables them, or for building and maintaining a stable and sustainable "floor" for human existence. We pour funding into tech startups that promise to maybe change the world when we know that we can move the needle (often for a fraction of the cost) by spending on basic needs and not looking for a direct ROI. It doesn't matter that people are starving, homeless, wallowing in practical and spiritual squalor, because we're going to Mars, damn it. In the end, we just can't seem to take our eyes and minds off the shiny things, even knowing that we're merely gazing at the glare of hubris.
- aerostable_slug 6y ago
  > we know that we can move the needle (often for a fraction of the cost) by spending on basic needs and not looking for a direct ROI Based on San Francisco's experience, I'd say spending other people's money isn't enough to do much about the homeless issue. Further, I suspect a startup that moves the economy upwards results in citizens with more disposable income to donate to good causes. Ideally, the competition for those funds leads to increased effectiveness from those good causes (because I'm not going to donate to someone who doesn't efficiently get food to the mouths of the hungry so to speak). Also, the "shiny things" often bring tangible and less tangible benefits (e.g. technology advances, societal celebration of science & engineering), whereas quite a bit of our social programs seem like money pits with no real outcome other than feeling good about burning all that time and treasure (see above re: SF and the homeless). I'm reminded of people who protested going to the Moon, arguing instead that the funding should be spent on welfare programs. The difference is that going to the Moon is a quantifiable win and also brings interesting benefits to society, and there is an end state where the job is done. Welfare, as it is currently structured, does nothing to actually solve the problem of systemic poverty so its job is never done. It's not even clear if increasing or decreasing funding really does much about the problem.
  - bsanr2 6y ago
    "San Francisco's experience" proves my case. I suspect that if you poofed one or two of the larger tech companies or VC firms and took the delta in housing prices from reduced demand/speculative pressure and put it towards building, NIMBY laws notwithstanding, you'd solve homelessness in SF. That is the magnitude of money (that is, our past and future time, energy, and belief in our own produftive capacity, converted to fungible currency) that is being siphoned from society in order to prop up an industry with, frankly, a mixed record of public good ROI. That's just one case of many. The anti-moon mission people were right, in the end. The advances solely attributable to it were few (to ask someone to name them is akin to asking a government official what assets and missions, exactly, Edward Snowden's leaks compromised), and NASA and the government abandoned the effort not when the possibility of further advances dried up, but when the prestige of beating the USSR wore off. This, of course, is the fundamental issue: that the shininess blinds and then dulls, leaving the problems that were ignored still unaddressed. The people protesting the moon missions were: *Environmental advocates *Anti-war protestors *Black and PoC Civil Rights advocates Consider then, in good faith, the troubles that continue to rock our society, some 40-50 years hence. Interesting parallels. On the other hand, welfare works. Full stop. Like I said, we've been conditioned. And by "we", I mean "you."

kqr 6y ago

There's also a common line of reasoning that roughly goes "well this particular diamond has obviously already been mined, so no additional harm is caused by me wanting it." Obviously you and I see that even that line of reasoning alone jacks up demand for an awful business, but not all people have the capacity to reason that abstractly about how their behaviour plays a part in a very big aggregate. ---- My wife did get this after some discussion, but we got stuck with a different problem: we asked virtually every local jeweller to create something with a lab-created diamond (or even a different shiny rock entirely) and all of them -- to our astonishment -- refused. They only work with mined diamonds from the suppliers they have long-standing contracts with and can ensure are as ethical as they come. I'm sure they have their reasons but that was very frustrating.

GordonS 6y ago
> I'm sure they have their reasons I would guess it's profit, with mined diamonds being more expensive than engineered ones?
r0ze-at-hn 6y ago
> we asked virtually every local jeweller to create something with a lab-created diamond (or even a different shiny rock entirely) and all of them -- to our astonishment -- refused. ooooo now there is a signal. Putting in the time and effort to find/get a jeweller to make me a custom ring with a lab-created diamond when no one will. Unique, expensive. Not something he can just order from the internet. Because lets just cut to the chase. The diamond is all about the story, the signal and what it represents, not what it is.
Nick87633 6y ago
I've had jewelers make custom jewelry with stones I brought. Maybe you haven't found the right one yet.
lastofthemojito 6y ago
That's interesting - when I bought an engagement ring for my wife the one and only jewelry store I went to was happy to order me a bare ring, give me the size range of diamonds that would fit it, and then install the 3 synthetic diamonds I ordered from Gemesis. It seemed like installing diamonds that folks already owned into new rings was something they did relatively often. Maybe you'd have better luck approaching it that way - "I already have a diamond, what rings can you sell me that would fit it?" rather than "source me a synthetic diamond and put it in a ring for me". Although it looks like Gemesis, the company I bought the synthetic diamonds from, has pivoted and rebranded as Pure Grown Diamonds, and sells wholesale rather than retail now.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
alistairSH 6y ago
Were these chain jewelers? Did you bring the stone, or want to include that as part of the purchase?

adamhp 6y ago

I had a similar conversation and I think you're spot on with "conditioning". I don't even think it is about luxury, necessarily. It's literally just how middle class+ white women grow up in the United States. I can't necessarily fault someone for making those kinds of emotional choices after being bombarded with that idea their entire lives. Totally agree with your campaign idea too. I think a lot of it is social signaling and if there was enough of a big movement against them, diamonds would be "canceled" pretty quickly. Social pressure is one of the great guiding forces we have (for better and for worse).

hyperpallium2 6y ago

The solution is simple: make man-made diamonds more expensive than mined.

GordonS 6y ago
This is actually a great idea - either to make them more expensive, or to pressure governments to ban them outright, like has been done for ivory.

sopooneo 6y ago

My guess is that we need a sweeping, emotion-fill, romantic story toward something else, not just away from the current diamond-status quo. There certainly is a quiet satisfaction, and clear conscience, in avoidance of evil. But no joy in the act of NOT. A normal person who repeatedly throws aside a full heart in favor of facts will not wake up singing for many years. There needs to be a new song to replace the old, something as emotionally filling as DeBeers shadow demons dancing to a swelling string section.

username90 6y ago
That will be hard, women are much more conservative and care more about traditions than men.
- bongoman37 6y ago
  Interesting that you are downvoted when what you are saying is quite true.
  - xmprt 6y ago
    It's downvoted because it's not true. There are tons of traditions that men follow too. Gender norms just lead to men and women following different traditions.
rmah 6y ago
This is quite insightful. I never thought of it this way but I think you are correct. If I could rephrase it a bit more clinically, the signaling of fitness (wealth, social status, etc) is important to the human mating rituals. And diamonds are integral to that in a some cultures. That underlying need is probably innate will not change. Therefore, as you said, you can't just say "NO", it needs to be replaced with something else.
aksss 6y ago
Dude.. people don’t think about who’s making their Nikes or Apple products or tshirts. They buy these incidental products with zero concern for the people producing them. How noble are we, talking about refusing to buy blood diamonds when the very MEMS mic in a household device probably vibrated to the scream of people watching a friend jumping out a factory window. Getting people to care about who’s winning and losing in a production lifecycle seems like something that doesn’t get fixed initially with the diamond-buying crowd when the shoe-buying consumers don’t even care. I think what I’m struggling to get at is that the diamond-buying population at least have these earnest “noble ideals” of love, unity, etc represented by this product for which at some low level the sacrifice and blood may _add_ value (god knows what unconscious calculus is at work in the mind of a grown princess). Compare this to a pair of crap tennis shoes that you’re going to throw away, where they are completely utilitarian, replaceable, and you have zero emotional investment in what they represent. The suffering represented by the product offers nothing other than the blatant profit of the consumer. And we can’t wrest the shoes from the consumer’s hands no matter what is said about the abysmal conditions that produced them. All of these conditions in the production of these products are known. Nobody can claim ignorance in the first world. If the population at large hasn’t had a moment of moral clarity by now, I’m not sure I’d hold my breath any longer. Either systemically the culture needs to be more open to moral awakenings (a hard sell in a world defined by deconstructionism) or a new and acceptable critique of globalism at a policy level needs radical change. Just my .02 but I’ve been hearing the same convo about diamonds since I was a kid and it’s as sad as hearing the rationalizing of any addict.

exoque 6y ago

>In the west, we are conditioned from an early age to believe that "diamonds are a girl's best friend", that women should accept nothing less that a "real" diamond, and that men should spend some silly multiple of their salary when buying such a diamond. In the west, the US or the anglosphere? Because I only know this from Hollywood movies.

GordonS 6y ago
The west. I'm from the UK, and this mindset is common here. I've discussed this topic with others from various other European countries, and it seems to be widespread.
EricE 6y ago
Ha - Hollywood/Debears infected post-war Japan too: https://danwin.com/2010/08/how-de-beers-diamonds-won-over-the-japanese-and-everyone-else/ https://danwin.com/2010/08/how-de-beers-diamonds-won-over-th... The scope of their mass brain washing is indeed staggering. Heck I have a good friend in the jewelry business and we still get into heated discussions about how he feels there is nothing wrong and how he is providing value as an agent of Debears brainwashing. It is pretty disgusting.

seiferteric 6y ago

Markets tend to abstract away responsibility. Just look at rhino horn, elephant tusk buyers in Asia, I am sure it's a similar story. Most people think that if they are buying from a reputable company that it must be okay, some companies even market that (Brilliant Earth) and even they get in trouble though since the diamond market in general is shady.

tzs 6y ago

Partial solution: change product labeling laws /consumer protection laws/trademark laws/etc to have an exception for diamonds that allows all diamonds regardless of origin to be labeled as natural and/or mined diamonds.

swat535 6y ago

> I personally fully agree, but unfortunately not everyone thinks as logically as you or I. Yes they don't because of marketing. If we want to really change this, the narrative, the media and marketing has to change from: Earth Diamonds = Status of eternity and "foreverness" to Earth Diamonds = Status of child abuse. With massive campaigns from media and celebrities, people can be shamed into changing their behaviour. We need to stop treating women as children and objects to be "bought out" with diamonds and gifts. The days of women needing men to "provide" for them are long gone. But I digress.. more to your point, just because something is a tradition, it doesn't mean we should throw our hands up and accept the status quo. Change requires bravery.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bsanr2 6y ago

More fundamentally: we're conditioned to privilege our ambitions (or maybe just grand ambitions in general) over things like concern for the horrific-yet-ultimately-banal suffering that enables them, or for building and maintaining a stable and sustainable "floor" for human existence. We pour funding into tech startups that promise to maybe change the world when we know that we can move the needle (often for a fraction of the cost) by spending on basic needs and not looking for a direct ROI. It doesn't matter that people are starving, homeless, wallowing in practical and spiritual squalor, because we're going to Mars, damn it. In the end, we just can't seem to take our eyes and minds off the shiny things, even knowing that we're merely gazing at the glare of hubris.

aerostable_slug 6y ago
> we know that we can move the needle (often for a fraction of the cost) by spending on basic needs and not looking for a direct ROI Based on San Francisco's experience, I'd say spending other people's money isn't enough to do much about the homeless issue. Further, I suspect a startup that moves the economy upwards results in citizens with more disposable income to donate to good causes. Ideally, the competition for those funds leads to increased effectiveness from those good causes (because I'm not going to donate to someone who doesn't efficiently get food to the mouths of the hungry so to speak). Also, the "shiny things" often bring tangible and less tangible benefits (e.g. technology advances, societal celebration of science & engineering), whereas quite a bit of our social programs seem like money pits with no real outcome other than feeling good about burning all that time and treasure (see above re: SF and the homeless). I'm reminded of people who protested going to the Moon, arguing instead that the funding should be spent on welfare programs. The difference is that going to the Moon is a quantifiable win and also brings interesting benefits to society, and there is an end state where the job is done. Welfare, as it is currently structured, does nothing to actually solve the problem of systemic poverty so its job is never done. It's not even clear if increasing or decreasing funding really does much about the problem.
- bsanr2 6y ago
  "San Francisco's experience" proves my case. I suspect that if you poofed one or two of the larger tech companies or VC firms and took the delta in housing prices from reduced demand/speculative pressure and put it towards building, NIMBY laws notwithstanding, you'd solve homelessness in SF. That is the magnitude of money (that is, our past and future time, energy, and belief in our own produftive capacity, converted to fungible currency) that is being siphoned from society in order to prop up an industry with, frankly, a mixed record of public good ROI. That's just one case of many. The anti-moon mission people were right, in the end. The advances solely attributable to it were few (to ask someone to name them is akin to asking a government official what assets and missions, exactly, Edward Snowden's leaks compromised), and NASA and the government abandoned the effort not when the possibility of further advances dried up, but when the prestige of beating the USSR wore off. This, of course, is the fundamental issue: that the shininess blinds and then dulls, leaving the problems that were ignored still unaddressed. The people protesting the moon missions were: *Environmental advocates *Anti-war protestors *Black and PoC Civil Rights advocates Consider then, in good faith, the troubles that continue to rock our society, some 40-50 years hence. Interesting parallels. On the other hand, welfare works. Full stop. Like I said, we've been conditioned. And by "we", I mean "you."