4 ms·
Right now the jewelery grade diamonds are about 1/4 the price of evil diamonds. They don't have much of an incentive to make the jewelry grade diamonds cheaper.
by rms 18y ago
Right now the jewelery grade diamonds are about 1/4 the price of evil diamonds. They don't have much of an incentive to make the jewelry grade diamonds cheaper. I suspect that even if diamond production gets to be almost as cheap as glass the price of diamond jewelery will still be inflated.
- marvin 18y agoNot a chance. Given diamonds the same price of glass, you can bet that in three months you could buy cheap (and tasteless) diamond jewelry in the same stores you can buy cheap (and tasteless) glass jewelry. Diamonds look better than glass, so why not use the real thing? There will always be markup for good design, but cheap design is cheap. Most diamond pieces would be much cheaper. The instinct of demonstrating class with expensive jewelry will not go away, however. Some other material will take the place of diamond - maybe some alloy of rare metals. Or maybe new luxury brands will arise, with a 30,000% markup on some quality, (well-)designed piece, maybe or maybe not containing diamonds. This is, of course, assuming that diamond reaches the price of glass, which I strongly doubt that it will. Last, in response to the OP, it is not the diamond trade which is the main problem. It is people doing evil things to one another. Just as crushing one monopoly will not end the practice of monopolies, crushing one evil empire will not end the practice of evil empires. Just wait 20 years and some evil trade will pop up in some other place. This focus on one particular phenomenon is counterproductive, because it blinds us to the general principles behind it.