The biggest diamond in over a century is found in Botswana

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/sk9b3zrs0

by surume • 2 years ago

14 23 2 years ago

AeZ1E2• 2 years ago

the diamond is fab but is this really necessary? we need to focus on real issues! also, why do diamonds cost so much when they're just old rocks?

andrepd• 2 years ago

Why do Michelin star restaurants cost so much when there's hungry children in developed countries? Why does finance and adtech pay so much when there's a shortage of teachers? Why is so much engineering effort and materials spent on luxury goods when infrastructure is crumbling? Why are five star hotels so expensive when there's a shortage of care workers for old people?

The answer to all these questions is the same.

Etheryte• 2 years ago

This is downright silly and wrong. Diamonds are not expensive because they're a cut above other gems, they're literally only expensive because of a monopoly that upholds artificial scarcity. Michelin star restaurants are expensive because they do culinary arts on the highest level. Diamonds are expensive only because one family owns all the mines.

feoren3• 2 years ago

The answer to all these questions is the same.

Only if that answer is "the world is incredibly complicated and each individual situation is laden with its own history, nuance, and complications." Because otherwise: no, the answer to all those questions is very different, because the world is incredibly complicated and each individual situation is laden with its own history, nuance, and complications. It's reasonable to ask about what those particular nuances are for a given situation without being brushed off like this.

beardyw• 2 years ago

This would bring the price down:

Mercury could have an 11-mile underground layer of diamonds, researchers say | CNN

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/science/mercury-diamond-under...

ErigmolCt3• 2 years ago

If this finding is confirmed and if such diamonds could be accessed

PhasmaFelis• 2 years ago

Diamonds are artificially scarce anyway. The big producers stockpile their output to keep prices high, and spread FUD about dirt cheap, just-as-good synthetics.

atlantic• 2 years ago

why do diamonds cost so much when they're just old rocks?

Seriously? Economics 101: supply and demand. Or is this a rhetorical question, with some kind of social justice slant?

AeZ1E2• 2 years ago

couldn't participate as i was in rhetoric 201

feoren3• 2 years ago

Why is it diamonds, and not iridium, pearl, or opal? Why does a diamond's value depreciate to nothing the instant it's sold, unlike gold? Why did the price of diamonds shoot up so drastically in the early 1900s? Why are the indistinguishable lab-grown diamonds in so much lower demand? Who are the major actors in the diamond trade, and what are their strategies and relationships to one another?

Many books could be (and, I'm sure, have been) written on these subjects. Don't act like "Econ 101" explains everything. "Econ 101" introduces a bunch of extremely simplified models that are later qualified, criticized, complexified, or even outright replaced. That's all fine if you're continuing on to get your economics degree, but I'd argue that someone who took Econ 101 without continuing into much more depths in economics probably has a worse understanding of the world than someone who never took it, because they take these ridiculously over-simplified models as some sort of inalienable truth. After Econ 101 you merely "know enough to be dangerous(ly wrong)".

sva_• 2 years ago

I think 8 billion people can do more than one thing at a time.

pennomi• 2 years ago

[Citation needed]

AndyMcConachie• 2 years ago

Does the miner who found it get any money for finding it?

Who gets to own it?

gizajob• 2 years ago

The miner gets paid every week. The company that owns the mine owns the diamond.

glimshe• 2 years ago

I never liked the idea of paying for diamonds, but what sealed the matter for me was how much my wife loved the lab diamond ring I bought her; 20% of the price of a natural diamond and indistinguishable from one without specialized equipment.

The price of diamonds will tank over time more so than it has already.

ErigmolCt3• 2 years ago

Also traditional mining has environmental impact

feoren3• 2 years ago

But the suffering is what makes it special!

Sarcasm, obviously. I never understood why people prefer diamonds produced by the manual labor (and often suffering) of other humans over diamonds produced by the ingenuity and knowledge of other humans. Science, bitch!

39896880• 2 years ago

No mention of the conditions the miners worked in to find it. A disgrace.

The biggest diamond in over a century is found in Botswana

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