The only thing I credit them for is being ruthlessly manipulative. "Fakes" is not a neutral word. It was very specifically chosen for its emotional baggage, similar to "pro-lifer" or "franken-foods". It is an emotional distracting piece of doublespeak and should not be condoned at all as being "reasonable".
It’s only doublespeak if you subscribe to a literalist form of communication that most people do not use. “Fake” isn’t a neutral word because it’s not intended to be - some people actually do prefer natural diamonds, just as some people really do prefer non-GMO food. It doesn’t matter if the reason they have that preference is due to artificial scarcity or a marketing campaign, the point is that they have that preference and many will keep it even if they are very informed on the matter. People are not hyperrational in the development of their preferences.
The point I’m trying to make here is that while I agree people shouldn’t spend ostentatious amounts of money on items with artificial scarcity, I think litigating the use of the word “fake” is effectively a strawman and a sideshow when we’re discussing De Beers. In my opinion, while lab-made diamonds are more fiscally responsible, they’re not less silly as a purchase than natural diamonds if you dislike the capitalist insertion of a jewelry preference. It’s just local maxima: if you buy a lab-grown diamond you’re still buying a diamond. You’re still buying into that “emotional baggage”, as you put it, you’re just being a bit more fiscally savvy about it. If we assume people are not born with a desire for diamonds, then there is a credible argument buying synethic ones is still feeding a desire you (and I!) find fundamentally disagreeable.
No, I'm not. I'm stating the fact that the language used by De Beers is manipulative. Whether or not people fall for that manipulation is a separate argument.
I did not bring consumers into the equation, you did. And speaking of manipulative language, I would appreciate it if you didn't try to spin it as if I'm the one talking down to them.
More abstractly, to call a marketing campaign emphasizing the “realness” of a luxury item manipulative is to say that people could be manipulated by it. I disagree that people are manipulated into their desires for these items, even if their desires are not financially rational.
The fact that an entire industry relies on fallacies does not make calling out those fallacies counter-productive. On the contrary.
More to the point, what exactly is the fallacy? That the “real” products are better? They are better for some definition, you just don’t share the same definition of “better” as the people buying them. That’s the problem: the claim of superiority is not falsifiable, and it’s normative. It’s valid to say that synthetic diamonds are better according to some metrics like flawlessness, but that isn’t the metric everyone values. Many people demonstrably want “as flawless as possible for the ‘real’ diamond I can afford.” That desire is not based on a fallacy, it’s based on different priors. People are approximately never perfectly price-efficient in their purchasing decisions, which means there’s some amount of irrationality everywhere. A desire to buy an inefficiently priced luxury item with artificial scarcity and status associations is price-irrational but it can make sense in general. In your view, there should be a rigorous notion of “the metric” to optimize for across various products, but that notion is fundamentally at odds with how humans operate culturally. To put it bluntly, many people know and don’t care that synthetic diamonds are better in many respects, just as many people know and don’t care that a “franken-Rolex” can be better than an actual Rolex in many respects. They still want the “real” version, and from there they’ll optimize further.
Like I said, I think there are legitimate criticisms of the diamond trade, but in my opinion they’re glossed over when we get preoccupied talking about what constitutes “real” versus “fake” and whether or not people should want the “real” thing.
Oh really? And you did not think of explaining this completely non-standard usage of the word "productive" until now? Who is not being "productively precise" in their argumentation here?
I'm done with this debate. Your style of discussion is basically building up a giant Rube Goldberg machine of words for something that is extremely simple at the core, which is turning it into an endurance run of who can keep up with the walls of text the longest. That is neither convincing, nor respectful of the person you are debating with to.
Sorry, that wasn’t my intention. But respectfully, I disagree. I don’t think this topic is at all simple, and I find nuance to be a helpful perspective.
Especially for people who are not (yet) particularly invested/interested, it signals that the "fake" ones are flawed and objectively worse in terms of quality, because of the parallel to fake (counterfeit) goods which often are.
Instead of fake, calling them synthetic or artificial would be more neutral choices. For "real" you could use "natural(ly occurring)" or similar.
Predisposed is a pretty strong word. Do you think people are born with a preference for “natural” diamonds? I happen to believe that most preferences you hold are learned throughout life, perhaps even manufactured by others.
This is not whataboutism because I'm not excusing the diamond industry's behavior by distracting the conversation to irrelevant examples. Instead, I'm generalizing the diamond industry as part of a greater phenomenon to demonstrate that the problem isn't just the diamond industry, it's the way human beings are incentivized to operate with respect to status symbols in general.
Simply replying with that link tells me that you believe my points can be reduced - and similarly dismissed - simply by labeling them with whatever the term is for the (perceived) fault in the argument. That's about as constructive as saying something is an ad hominem without any effort to explain why, or to declare something is fake news without providing more information.
You're not debating in good faith. Moreover, what's the point? You must know you're not going to convince me with a low effort comment sending me to a Wikipedia page describing one of the many possible ways an argument can be fallacious. You didn't even both to explain why it applies (which, again, it doesn't). So why are you even bothering with this?
YES IT FUCKING DOES YOU HYPOCRITICAL TWAT. Obtusity is NOT nuance.
> to honestly criticize the diamond industry, we should criticize the entire market of veblen goods in general.
You're both defending the diamond industry and admitting that they're bad, but saying we are only allowed to criticise it if we criticise everything that has remotely similar workings. That is the whataboutist fallacy
It would have taken you three sentences of reading comprehension of linked WikiPedia to figure this out. I do not for one second believe that you are arguing in good faith yourself sir. Good day.
"Fake" means something isn't what it's claimed to be.
A piece of glass cut to look like a diamond is a fake. You make like it or not, but it isn't a diamond. A diamond is a mass of carbon in a particular structure, and glass isn't.
A lab-grown diamond is not fake. It is, in fact, a diamond.
If people want to distinguish between "natural" vs "synthetic" or "mined" vs "grown" diamonds, fine. But "fake" is truly a misleading term here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07...
De Beers definitely mined cornered the market for a long time. But its over.
The meme that diamonds are falling off frees if not for De Beers is not accurate. But with these artificals, it may very well come true.
IMO it's not much different than deciding to drink "natural water" over simple tap water (though I'm basing this off living near a spring well that supplies my tap water, experiences may vary).
Preferring the “real” over the “fake” is only irrational insofar as preferring either is irrational. You either buy these items because you want the status signalling effect, or yoy buy them because you actually have an innate appreciation for them.
"What makes a diamond "natural"?"
Diamonds are perceived as luxury goods because of the elaborate fiction of artificial scarcity woven around it by De Beers, which you have acknowledged upthread.
Mentioning gold wasn't necessary because alchemy never delivered on a man-made substitute for gold. And it distracts from the core issue, we are here debating the consequences of the Chinese lab's feat for diamond after all.
EDIT: To summarize, I'm not clear on why you think applying a "luxury goods" lens will lead to better insights as to why people prefer "natural/real" over "man-made/fake" substitutes, when the underlying issue is one of perception, which can be shaped by anyone with an agenda and a marketing budget.
They now basically say, "the more pure they are, the more valuable, because they are incredibly rare (because we artificially limit supply) unless they are really, really pure, because we can't limit supply of those."
Remember, lots of things are natural, but only the rare ones are valuable.
If you approach this from the perspective that you’re spending more money for imperceptible characteristics encouraged by a massive conglomerate, then sure, it’s obviously irrational. But if you look at it from the perspective of signaling or status seeking, it makes sense to pursue the “real” item over the “fake” one.
If you buy a synthetic diamond, the only people you’re signaling favorably to are those in your particular ingroup with respect to opinions on De Beers. If you buy a real diamond, you are signaling to a much wider set of people. It’s not fiscally rational, but it’s not supposed to be.
Do you keep the price tag on it?
Or do you just talk about how, obviously, you'd never stoop to buying man-made diamonds?
In other words, I basically agree that diamond prices are subject to artificial scarcity, but give credit to the other side’s point. They have a reasonable and internally consistent argument, even if we find it disagreeable. If you interpret “real” to mean “natural”, their position is reasonable. This isn’t novel - we use “real” and “fake” to refer to “natural” and “artificial” for many other things.