Re:Diamonds Are Bullshit
by mikhailfranco on Thursday November 12, 2020 @12:10AM
(#25066679)
A typical tale of monopolistic control of supply and distribution, colonial exploitation, marketing propaganda, and bribing or colluding with elites to ignore obvious anti-trust violations, then diminish the cost of any face-saving convictions.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Why was De Beers not cut up by anti-trust legislation much earlier? This kind of monopolistic behaviour is probably worse than anything Standard Oil or AT&T has ever done.
The problem is they are extremely international and decentralised, and they don’t have any significant capital infrastructure in well regulated countries. This means if any country went after them, they’d just move operations somewhere else in a matter of a couple of days. International cooperation on things like this is notoriously difficult.