People are willing to give something up for proof of effort; a personal union, or something else of value.

Whenever someone tells me bitcoin is a scam and has no intrinsic value, I ask them about diamonds, expensive art, etc. Most people cannot reconcile bitcoin and diamonds (as jewelery) in the same value frame.

Diamonds do have some functional uses of course, as does gold. But their price is wholly determined by the belief (whether justified or not) that they cannot easily be manufactured on demand. Just like bitcoin.

I really like that, bitcoin as the diamond of yesteryear. Effectively finite, has to be mined, only has value/importance because a group of people assign it one, has limited practical use (diamonds as abrasives mostly, bitcoin as a cookie crumb record of transactions) is seen as foolish/wasteful by others, you can't use either for practical trade as the vast majority of individuals/companies don't accept either for trade and both could easily be rendered worthless by a technological advancement or social change.

This is literally what my sister responded with when I asked her why she liked diamonds so much:

https://pics.me.me/hello-everybody-sparkle-sparkle-15208126....

Bitcoins aren’t pretty. Sparkling, finely cut specific rocks are. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.

Does your sister have a preference for diamonds over finely cut zirconium (or even glass)? It’s likely not as simple as that, even if you and her try to rationalize it that way.

Unlike gold, there's no way to sell 1% of a diamond.

Gold/bitcoins/diamonds just become more desirable when their price goes up.

Diamonds only prove that in a very narrow sense, namely in that some gemstone expert (that you need to trust) can subject the diamond to a battery of sophisticated tests in order to testify to its genuine, non-counterfeit nature.

Bitcoin's Proof of Work is trivially verifiable in comparison.

Also the worth of bitcoin is (kinda) backed by the worth of the electricty which is used to mine blocks (and consequently new bitcoins).

That's the point: signal to peers that you've found a great partner that's willing to throw this kind of money away just for your status.

These things are symbols that ascribe value to a person and a relationship. Getting it made out of plastic rather than gold goes not carry the same symbolism.

That’s not true. The far greater purpose is for the man to signal commitment to his bride. By spending a lot of money, especially if it’s not easy for you to afford it, you signal to her that you are seriously committed to her. You signal that you trust her with something very expensive that would not be easy for you to replace.

You can’t bypass that sort of thing. If the price of diamonds collapsed completely then we’d need to find something else to replace them.

Also, we can bypass this kind of thing and did up until the last century. Further, certain couples bypass this type of thing all the time routinely. You don't see gay male couples giving each other diamond engagement rings and yet their marriages aren't exploding in spectacular fashion.

It doesn't even make sense from a financial penalty standpoint. Anyone who is on an upward trajectory would be able to bounce back from losing a month or two of salary relatively quickly in which case it's not really forcing long term commitment.

There is no real point to this ritual other than showing off. The guy gets to show off how much cash he has and the woman gets to show off to everyone else that she has a guy with a lot of financial resources. It is completely arbitrary and we have arbitrarily converged on a diamond as a mechanism to do this. Sure giving rings makes people feel good; receiving and gifting any present makes people feel good; but it's absolutely not a necessary requirement for a healthy relationship.

This isn't quite true.

1) Who's "we"? Outside the US, no one really cares that much about diamonds. Outside the US, western Europe, and Japan, no one does. It's largely an American phenomenon.

2) People didn't just "arbitrarily coverge" on diamonds; this was engineered by DeBeers almost a century ago, in what's probably the most successful marketing campaign in human history.

>If we are talking about financial commitment and signaling to a partner, why not gift a house, a car, a long term bond, cash, expensive clothing, a watch, literally any other piece of jewelry, etc?

This is literally what's done in other cultures, and has been for ages. Though usually, it's the bride's family who has to pony up all this largesse, in what's called a "dowry".

>Why does it have to be the guy that does it; shouldn't the wife also signal equal levels of commitment or is she incapable of that?

This is a very good question, because again, in other cultures, it has traditionally been the bride (or rather, her family) who had to provide a dowry to get a decent man to marry her. This of course has, in more recent times, driven families to abort their unborn female children in favor of male children.

Pedant here. Hello everybody!

There is a difference between dowry and bride price. Traditionally the dowry in culture with custom of primogeniture was the portion of inheritance the bride brought with her. It's a bribe to the groom's family not to contest the rest of the inheritance when his father-in-law dies, not to put a fine point on it.

Following Anglo-Saxon customs (which was heavily influenced by the Vikings) brides were given morgangifu, literally morning gift, from her husband the morning after the wedding. This is hers to take with her and her children, after a divorce or death of the husband. See also morganastic marriage, where a woman and her children get nothing except the morning gift, that is, she and the kids don't get the traditional inheritance (crown, title, land, such). It's a payoff to the bride's family to not contest what's regarded as the groom's family's property, not to put a fine point on it.

The bride price is the cost paid by the groom to the bride's family, this practice was more common in Asia and the tribal Middle East. Women were regarded as property, her leaving the family home and joining the family of her husband is regarded as a loss to her clan. In ancient Chinese text, lesser wives not just concubines were bought, literally.

The British colonists, upon observing the similarities of this custom to their own, applied the English term "dowry" to it. The practice, while largely extinct in mainstream British society, has held on in parts in South Asia (though many modern South Asians consider it abhorrent), and therefore its modern colloquial use is more connected to the South Asian custom.

There is a separate practice of the bride's parents gifting her with items of jewelry which are intended to be her sole property - a sort of insurance policy against an unreliable husband - and not that of the groom or his family. Whether that was honored or not obviously depended a lot on the situation. This practice has actually continued relatively unabated, and it is partially responsible for the high demand for gold in South Asia during wedding seasons.

Is committing to spending your life with someone not trusting them with something that wouldn't be easy for you to replace? What's more irreplaceable than the years of your own life? Not every couple gets a diamond engagement ring or precious metal wedding rings (the prevalence is trending downward) and I've heard no studies that establish correlation between successful marriages and diamond engagement rings. Your line of thought is very lucrative for corporations like deBeers, however.

And how does she know you’re committed if you’re not willing to risk anything up front? You can say “well she knows me! We’ve been dating for years!” but then you balk at trusting her with something valuable? Maybe she doesn’t really know you. Maybe things are great now, when nobody has committed anything of value, but will it work when things get tough?

Of course a diamond’s no guarantee of that. It’s only a starting point.

What's more irreplaceable than the years of your own life

We’re talking about the beginning of a married relationship: the engagement. When people talk about engagement rings, they don’t look at dollar figures, they look at number of weeks salary. That is the point! You’re putting time into the relationship up front. Think of it like putting a down payment on a house.

Your line of thought is very lucrative for corporations like deBeers, however

There are plenty of other diamond sources besides deBeers. Lots of people are buying diamonds mined in the Canadian arctic, for example. They have the added benefit that you know they aren’t conflict diamonds.

People do this research when buying diamonds these days! When your fiancée is showing the ring to her friends, if she can tell them a story about all of this research you put into it, then it means even more to her.

This is NOT how happy long lasting marriages are done these days. I would argue that even any days. But reality is, most people are not really happy in their lives, somehow 'lost' drifting around, and combined with sheepish mentality they can accrue this mindset of 'if he spent enough money on some piece of rock then and only then he must really love me, otherwise not', because others are saying so. Desperately immature.

If others are saying so, it must be right, no? Well, in this case, no. Some people take lifetime to understand this simple truth, some are fast learners (ideally from other's mistakes), and of course some never learn.

That's not a great start to a marriage

And why doesn't she have to do the same

Plenty of times the guy has been all-in right up until the moment he becomes a father, then he bails. If he has no financial stake in the relationship either then there’s nothing holding him to the marriage except his word and his feelings, both of which can be broken.

Single motherhoods is ridiculously common these days. I think a big part of the reason why is that tradition and commitment are dying out, and marriages based on romance are dying along with them.

I’m pretty sure there are much better ways to put time into a relationship upfront, since probably nobody said on their deathbed I wish you worked more to get me a bigger diamond for our engagement. Spending time to actually know each other instead of working for piece of carbon which is very useful for some industries.

Also this weeks of salary is also something I cannot wrap my head around, I was engaged a few times, breaking off the engagement had nothing to do with the value of the engagement ring.

Perhaps we could replace them with healthy relationships?

(/s)

Q: Any actual evidence that cash is any kind of reliable signal for commitment to a relationship? There would appear to be plenty of celebrity divorce counter-examples.

[In the spirit of full disclosure: my wife didn't want - or get - an engagement ring]

The social context mutated yet the artifact remained - mostly out of the resistance to thinking known as tradition and the desire to sell overpriced baubles.

Q: Is it just me, or does that statement sound like it fell out of the 1950s through some kind of wormhole?

In no particular order:

* If the girl asks the guy to marry her, are we to understand that he should expect to receive a diamond ring from her, to somehow seal the deal?

* Why should it be the guy "promising marriage" to the girl?

* Why should it be based on "guys" marrying "girls" at all?

I agree with this, and it even makes rational sense. I just wish we could "spend a lot of money" on something else like gold, or a house downpayment. At least those are assets - you aren't simply throwing your money away. Even a charitable trust would be a more impactful way of demonstrating commitment through sacrifice - spending money on diamonds is like throwing it away.

Why is that important? Maybe it’s less important today, but if you turn on her and she has to strike out on her own, then her engagement ring becomes a bit of wealth she has access to in an emergency. In that regard it may seem rather silly (why not a bank account?) but in the past, women didn’t have bank accounts or other easy ways to access wealth.

I've seen people do the same thing with their wedding that left them $30k in debt.

I totally buy their reasoning for why they did it, but they lose me when they prescribe it to everyone else.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314

I used to feel that same way as you, but I've changed my opinion over time. It's just one of those community norms that (for me, anyway) makes HN an interesting place.

https://www.bain.com/insights/global-diamond-industry-report... (Figure 16)

"Yes!!" And she was giddy at the prospect.

I felt confirmation in that moment for having broken up her years before that.

Another few years after that conversation she got her diamond -- after gaining 100lbs and getting a boob job.

I really don't understand how some people think.