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South African diamond mines are closing due to weak sales and lab-grown stones
- wewewedxfgdf 1mo agoShorter: "South African diamond mines are closing due to lab-grown stones"
- bookofjoe 1mo agohttps://www.wsj.com/business/diamond-mines-are-closing-and-south-africans-have-few-alternatives-fa3b8cbf?st=gCCax6&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink https://www.wsj.com/business/diamond-mines-are-closing-and-s...
- ggm 1mo ago"The death of the diamond" Edward Jay Epstein (1983)
- insamniac 1mo agosimilar to the lab-grown intelligence impact
- deleted 1mo ago[deleted]
- davidhyde 1mo agoOh shame. The poor devils.
- reid-rigo 1mo agoHope to see these headlines some day for the meat industry
- SoftTalker 1mo agoIf we can replace the taste, appearance, and texture of a medium-rare rib eye with lab grown meat at a substantially cheaper price, we will.
- wonderwonder 1mo agoAgree, as long as it's meat. Lab grown meat from cells is meat. The reason impossible never worked was becuase it wasn't meat. Very few people are going to trade meat for soy and vegetables
- fooker 1mo agoYeah impossible was targeting a weird small niche. The intersection of 'vegan by all means', 'loves the taste of meat', 'does not care about ultra processed food', 'enough money to go for the expensive option'. No wonder it did not work.
- moate 1mo agoIDK what "never worked" means here, the market cap for Impossible/Beyond alone is still over a billion dollars. You can still get an Impossible Whopper at any Burger King in the US. There's plenty of issues with selling meat alternatives, I don't think you're the person to speak to them for some reason...
- bluefirebrand 1mo agoAccording to Google AI "The global beef industry has a total market value of approximately $465 billion to $526 billion" Impossible/Beyond barely exists in comparison
- aziaziazi 1mo agoThat’s a weird comparaison between one or two brand and "an industry". Let’s compare two ranch’s with… the global legumes industry !
- bluefirebrand 1mo agoOn the topic of replacing meat with fake meat, yeah it kind of does invite comparison, because they are essentially entirely competing industries at that point
- vlyan 1mo agothe demand for diamonds is artificial, the demand for meat is very much organic. the only thing stopping most people from consuming more of it is the cost -- driven by demand.
- doodlebugging 1mo agoA better target would be the oil and gas industry. When you look at this diamond situation it looks like in approximately one generation, demand for natural diamonds dropped low enough that the effort to mine new diamonds became uneconomical. This happened because the ease of obtaining lab-grown diamonds that could be much higher quality, made lab-grown diamonds more attractive because buyers, who may already have been squeezed by other unfavorable economic realities found no reason to purchase natural diamonds at a higher price point. If we could see a shift like that in energy source preference from one generation then perhaps we could destroy the incentive to produce more oil and gas or make it so uneconomical for use a motor vehicle fuel that it became a specialty product that was produced only to supply a niche product line. We have a similar opportunity now with electric vehicles, solar panels, battery storage, etc that we can make a large dent in the volume of crude oil and natural gas required to power our economies. Developing nations have an advantage in a way because they have less legacy infrastructure to support that requires oil and gas. They can adopt the new big thing and just roll with that saving their citizens lots of money and environmental consequences associated with use of hydrocarbons fuels. More than 35 years in the oil and gas industry. This is what I learned. We should invest in developing nations to bring them up to speed with best available technologies. If we waste too much time we will see continents like Africa with 56 (?) nations become a flash-point for the next round of resource wars (oil and gas conflicts) that will be pushed on them by foreign operators attempting to make as much of the O&G money as possible before the world gets the message and abandons their destructive products permanently. We are already seeing some of this today. Millions of lives are in the crossfire. We have an opportunity to make a difference and we should take it. Old and young in developed nations should adopt next-gen tech ASAP so that kill these dino-corps before they kill too many more of us.
- Gibbon1 1mo agoThere are a number of efforts to grow vat grown protein. That's producing food without plants even.
- Ekaros 1mo agoSo many industries to replace. Like maternity wards. Or farms in general. Some people seem to be against replacing wood industry however weirdly.
- AdmiralAsshat 1mo ago"Millennials are killing diamond mines!"
- downrightmike 1mo agoSEVERELY LIMITED POWER!!!!!
- SoftTalker 1mo agoGood.
- mlmonkey 1mo agoI heard once that even if DeBeers stopped all diamond mining activity, their existing stockpile would last for a 100 years or more.
- senorrib 1mo agoThat’s not even close to being true.
- loloquwowndueo 1mo agoYou both need to provide citations my dudes.
- margalabargala 1mo agoThe first person hedged their statement with "I heard once" so it's likely true regardless of whether the rest is accurate. In a similar vein it has been said (by me, just now) that DeBeers is actually already out of diamonds and manufactures then de novo from the compressed ashes of orphans.
- loloquwowndueo 1mo ago“I heard” = hearsay. Citation needed. (I mean, I heard the earth is flat - but it’s not)
- bdangubic 1mo agoI heard that De Beers donated 99.6% of all of their profits so I am not sure what all the hoopla is about them
- margalabargala 1mo agoRight but I heard that the recipient of the donation was the Epstein-Trump Boarding School For Children.
- yogthos 1mo agouplifting news of the day right there
- tedchs 1mo ago> Demand for engagement rings gave thousands of South Africans steady work at De Beers. Now, weak sales and lab-grown stones are taking it away. So wait, on this Labor Day weekend, it sounds like the WSJ is pro-worker, but only if they're in South Africa?
- delfinom 1mo agoAt least they aren't blaming millennials still.
- brookst 1mo agoNah, they’re pro-De Beers
- kstrauser 1mo agoGiven the infamous conditions of diamond mining, to me that reads like “won’t someone think of the jobless slaves?” Someone no longer being forced to slave away in the mines is not exactly a great loss to workers rights. “De Beers: Because the tears of children make it sparkle!”
- eudamoniac 1mo agoThey're not jobless slaves, they are job having people who are losing their jobs. If there was a better job available they'd do it. Now they are going to be homeless I assume.
- smt88 1mo agoWSJ’s journalism is center-left and trustworthy. Their editorials are written by right-wing sycophants and lunatics.
- mcv 1mo agoI've never heard of WJS being center-left. But then I don't read it, I only come across what is occasionally shared online, most of which sounds insane.
- glimshe 1mo agoHow will we survive without the safe and wholesome diamond mines? I guess we'll all have to be okay with the much superior and cheaper lab diamonds... The picture subtitle says everything that needs to be said about this: "Miners like De Beers have positioned diamonds as synonymous with love and devotion." Scumbags.
- missedthecue 1mo agoBrutal news for Botswana which was really breaking new ground in raising Sub Saharan living standards. 30% of their GDP and a huge portion of government revenues are diamond exports. And they had gotten to 100% formalized and child labor free supply lines
- bossyTeacher 1mo agoHopefully, the have foreseen this and they have diversified adequately. Relying on a single source for most of your income is never good. Whether that is diamonds or oil. Hopefully they got their own sovereign fund up and running/
- hedora 1mo agoThe did away with child slavery in the mines, but severely exploited female adults instead: https://www.freedomunited.org/news/botswana-diamonds-ugly-truth/ https://www.freedomunited.org/news/botswana-diamonds-ugly-tr... Things like marital rape are still legal there.
- aaron695 1mo ago[dead]
- colingauvin 1mo agoI'm not trying to read your comment as whataboutism, but it did get me wondering: From a moral or ethical standpoint, if there is a gradient route from "very immoral to moral", but it involves first going from "very immoral" to just plain old regular immoral - do we view it as an improvement or a deficiency? Is there a route that involves going from very immoral to moral in one direct step? For example, exploitation is bad, but child exploitation is worse. So moving from just child exploitation to adult exploitation is a positive move that still results in an abhorrent status quo. On the other hand I can't think of an example where we went from child exploitation --> no exploitation of any kind...
- harimau777 1mo ago
- 486sx33 1mo ago[dead]
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- jonstewart 1mo agoSo lab grown diamonds are good and cheap enough I can finally buy my wife of 21 years a diamond ring?
- Loughla 1mo agoYes. And there are a ton of companies that sell just loose stones, so you can take it to a locally owned shop for the ring and setting, thereby keeping more of the money in your own community.
- ninjalanternshk 1mo agoNot to be this way but can you not go to a local jeweler and buy a ring with a lab-grown diamond in it, no assembly required?
- asadotzler 1mo agoThe jeweler might have a smaller selection and steeper, retail prices. Many jewelers don't deal in diamonds at all. I mean, you're right, just ask them to set a lab-grown rock. You're not bringing in ingots of gold for the ring, after all. Then again, even synthetic diamonds can get expensive so maybe any savings is good savings.
- Loughla 1mo agoMy local jewelers don't carry lab grown diamonds. So you might be able to, you might not.
- hn_submit 1mo agoThe market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. They wanted to differentiate between natural and lab-grown versions with the former being much more expensive. But that train has left the station since there's little to no difference in quality between the two. In fact, I once predicted there'd be huge scams where lab-grown ones would be repackaged and sold as natural ones and that would ruin customers' trust in natural diamonds. But it now seems that isn't going to happen because customers are voting with their feet and leaving natural diamonds behind.
- bsoqk 1mo ago> The market for natural diamonds will cease to exist when you can buy lab-grown versions for a couple bucks. Just like the luxury watches market ceased to exist when you could buy quartz watches for 10 bucks.
- Loughla 1mo agoExcept in this case, the quartz watches would be better quality than the luxury watches I'm not sure your analogy has teeth.
- literalAardvark 1mo agoThe quartz watches are (way) better at time keeping. And the rest is just a matter of paying for luxury. The main reason the analogy doesn't really help is that the mechanical watch market absolutely cratered, and it's only being propped up by enthusiasts of cool machines. Diamonds can't really have that. They've already scammed the general population into using slave diamonds at monopoly prices for 30 years longer than they needed to, but no one is _passionate_ about slave diamonds.
- tptacek 1mo agoIt's a poor analogy because mechanical watches and quartz watches aren't perfect substitutes and aren't purchased for the same reasons. Everybody's phone keeps better time than a watch; absolute accuracy isn't the exclusive measure. Lab diamonds and mined diamonds are literally identical products.
- thijson 1mo agoI wonder if diamonds become cheap enough, and we are growing the crystal anyway, if we can introduce dopants and get interesting electrical properties.
- 1e1a 1mo agoInteresting video on the topic: https://youtube.com/watch?v=NLmd5vL0zmk https://youtube.com/watch?v=NLmd5vL0zmk
- adrian_b 1mo agoThis has been researched for decades, but progress is very slow. Other wide bandgap semiconductors, i.e. silicon carbide (a.k.a. "moissanite" in jewelry) and gallium nitride are well on their way to make silicon completely obsolete for power semiconductor devices, but they are still many years away from reaching their full potential, in good part because their crystals have still too many defects in comparison with the crystals that can be grown from silicon. Because of too many crystal defects, for now the only commercial SiC devices are MOSFETs and Schottky diodes, despite the fact that SiC thyristors have exceptional properties for working with very high voltages, but bipolar semiconductor devices are much more sensitive to crystal defects, so their mass production is waiting for improvements in crystal growing. Besides SiC and GaN, there are a few other semiconductors that have greater chances than diamond to become useful for semiconductor devices, e.g. gallium oxide or the sulfides of molybdenum and tungsten. In diamond, there is not only the problem of crystal defects, but also the currently known dopants have various undesirable properties, like becoming active only at high temperatures, so some diamond electronic devices could be made to work in an oven or on the Venus surface, but not at room temperature. While the use of diamond as a semiconductor is far in the future and there is no certainty that it will ever become able to replace silicon carbide, if artificial diamonds become cheap enough they might be used much more frequently for heatsinks, including in computers, as the material with the best thermal conductivity. Diamond heatsinks are already in use, but only in niche applications where price is irrelevant.
- MobileVet 1mo agoThis took way longer than I hoped & expected... the DeBeers cartel in full damage control has really squeezed everything they could from it.
- fhn 1mo agoso DeBeers just buys up all the labs that grow them and still have a monopoly. Lower the price competition appears and raise the price when competition goes bankrupt. Sort of like Amazon.
- xbmcuser 1mo agoThe process to make diamonds is open to anyone and has a lot of industrial uses apart from jewelry so not possible for Debeers to monopolize the market they can crash the prices but increasing prices won't be possible.
- newyankee 1mo agoHonestly it seems like they knew this would happen, but they managed to really make the most of it. If anything it is an example of how important marketing is in influencing culture and choices
- xbmcuser 1mo agoDebeers has been trying to sell their mines for years now unsuccessfully the public might not have known but the financial people did.
- bostik 1mo agoWell, they have at least one way to extend their market's lifespan at this point. They can double down on the provenance and openly claim the flag "product of artisanal slavery". I'm sure there are enough hard-right wingers who will happily flaunt their wealth and disdain for other human beings.
- lovich 1mo agoIts not gonna be just diamonds, pretty much every gemstone is subject to the lab grown stuff. Im into gem cutting as a hobby so its been great for me to find stuff like these cheap ruby roughs[1] but yea, its gonna fuck up anyone selling the natural stuff. [1]https://www.etsy.com/listing/4443524661/lab-grown-red-ruby-slab-500-550-ct-rough https://www.etsy.com/listing/4443524661/lab-grown-red-ruby-s...
- recursivecaveat 1mo agoThat's actually super cool. I wouldn't have even considered that you could buy a fist sized block of ruby for $40. Sounds like a fun hobby.
- lovich 1mo agohttps://www.ebay.com/itm/318411094465 https://www.ebay.com/itm/318411094465 Not ridiculously cheap, but probably within the realm of most people on this forums budget if they want to get into it. Another plus side of the lab grown gems is that they are usually uniform in quality. Natural stones can have a lot of variance in hardness and cracks that make them need a more nuanced hand on. If anyone running across this comment thread gets interested, the material you are looking for is "lab grown ${gemstone you care about} rough"
- dyauspitr 1mo agoLiterally everyone I know is enlightened about this but still spent $5k on a natural diamond ring myself included. There something about it (probably just the high cost) that makes the ladies very happy even though they are “enlightened”/rational as well.
- Der_Einzige 1mo agoThe same reason they buy LV, Gucci, Chanel, Hermes. It’s the same reason men buy Rolexes. Also don’t even question it since economic inequality going up means most of the good high end bags or watches out pace inflation!!!
- kstrauser 1mo agoThat's true, but hear me out. I wear reasonably priced, "nice" watch — a Seiko 5 GMT. Quartz watches tell time better. I wear this one because I think it's a good looking watch and like the way it looks and feels on me. Although quite practical as far as such things go, it's definitely in the "jewelry" category. I paid more than a well-working quartz digital costs purely because I found it attractive, not because it's an objectively amazing watch. I get the appeal of jewely. So... instead of spending $5k on that blood diamond, spend that much on a larger, prettier, flashier, objectively better lab diamond. Now you or your lady friend can enjoy a bigger, nicer, even more luxurious diamond for the same price. You can still spend $5k if you wish, but end up with something more mind-blowing.
- watwut 1mo agoYou move in unusual circles. That is pretty expensive ring for "everyone" to have.
- dyauspitr 1mo agoIt’s just upper middle class normies in the US. Nothing crazy.
- helpfulclippy 1mo agoIf we want to maintain having economic flex be an essential part of courtship lategame, let’s have new tradition should be donating two months pay to a non-profit to get some sort of well made certificate in her name. And then if she says “yeah I want you to donate to the Enslave African Children to Plunder the Earth For Frivolous Baubles Foundation,” you know, hopefully that’s a fucking bullet the guy just dodged.
- hayaatbhai6 1mo ago[flagged]
- ares623 1mo agoWe are being deprived of future Elon Musks as we speak. This needs to be curbed ASAP. The Elon Musk pipeline must be sustained. Our futures depend on it.
- leobg 1mo agoDo your homework. This has been debunked. Also, it was about emeralds.
- pythonic_hell 1mo agoWhat isn’t mentioned here is that the reason De Beers isn’t able to sustain a monopoly anymore is because of a US anti-monopoly ruling from the 90s AND because they’re unable to monopolise the huge synthetic diamond industry that has grown in China.
- glass1122 1mo ago[dead]
- tempodox 1mo agoCool. I never thought I’d see the day.
- odyssey7 1mo agoIf we figure out low-energy fusion for economical lab-origin gold, imagine what businesses would close if that were to happen. The transmutations are possible, it’s just that the energy currently required is worth more than the gold would be. Colder fusion -> cheaper lab-origin gold.