I thought that I would give you a post from the old blog before I shut it down. So, here you go.
DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER EVIL
What do you think of when you think of diamonds?
Perhaps you think of those really nifty commercials with the artsy shadows dancing and making out with sparkly-sparklies on them. Maybe you think of an engagement ring - how much your fiancee's [or yours] cost, how much you wish you COULD have gotten such and such a ring for her, the coolest dolphins-surrounding-the-biggest-rock-you've-ever-seen, and the like. Perhaps you think of glass cutters made from diamonds that can perforate or score bullet proof glass allowing for a very un-bullet proof response to an ordinary fist. It could be that you ponder upon the scientific value of the diamond - how far it has allowed laser technology to progress, the fascinating process of one of the Earth's most common elements turning into an indestructible [not really, more on that later] rock over a period of millions and millions of years. Or maybe if you're a smartass like me, you think of all the Pink Panther movies.
But most likely, you think of the nifty little catch phrases that have gone along with diamonds in the past..."Take her breath away..." Or, the most famous, "Diamonds are forever..."
Indeed they are...exactly what the title of this post says: forever evil.
Here are some things that maybe you don't think about regarding diamonds, because maybe you didn't know...
First off, diamonds are not a smart investment. They do not appreciate in value, nor do they really depreciate. They stay the same, with one exception [more on that later]. "Wait a minute," you say. "I remember high school economics, they told me that every good that is not consumable HAS to either appreciate or depreciate in value...right?" In any other case, yes. Oil prices aren't regulated due to the actual value of oil, but oil is a consumable resource. Diamonds are perhaps the only non-consumable good available that a dealer can sell to you for market prices decades after they have been mined and distributed. Why? How is it possible that this incredibly hard stone violates the laws of economics? Well, becase that's all it is. A FUCKING ROCK. True, there is one other unique factor involved, and one that is very important: you, as a consumer, will never find an object hard enough to even scratch your diamond [unless you're playing pinkie wars with an equally opposing and audacious rock, but who would do that?]. As such, diamonds will not degrade in quality or purity and never be damaged, like all other non-consumable products...actually, most of that is incorrect, but we'll talk about that later, and simply assume for a starter that everything we are told about the durability of diamonds is true. So, to slightly correct, IT IS A REALLY HARD FUCKING ROCK. But the real determining traits that affect the pricing of diamonds worldwide are a bit more malicious.
Women, the main target of diamond sales, have been brainwashed to never sell their diamonds, or to at least keep them in the family. A wealth of pre-mined diamonds that are not in circulation combined with rigid price regulation from De Beers [the worlds foremost diamond distributor] are tools to prevent speculation of diamonds. It is the largest monopoly the world has ever seen, but more on that later. The second technique is the artificial limiting of supply. One of the reasons De Beers can so stiffly regulate the price of diamonds is that they own almost all of them. Yes, look at that very simple, common sense sentence again and this time, think about it. Having control of the supply means you can basically do whatever you want in terms of business application. You can choke the distribution to artificially raise the value of the product; De Beers does this exact thing by restricting the number of diamonds that go to market every year, no matter how many are mined. Some sources [albeit unreliable ones with agendas of their own] speculate that over ninety percent of the diamonds released to the market in the last twenty-five years had all been mined over thirty years ago...the exception being the occasional diamond of unusual quality that would have a place on the current market [this source has since vanished into obscurity, and no further traces of legitmate claims of such nature or attempts to validate them exist; this is therefore totally unconfirmable, but I personally wouldn't put it past De Beers]. With such control of the market you can also control the methodology of advertising. The psychologically aggressive techniques employed by the Diamond Promotion Service are intimidating and hard to resist at best, and emotionally damaging and responsible for unrealistic expectations at worst.
A moment for an aside: The Diamond Promotion Service is owned by the J. Walter Thompson Advertising Agency, the largest advertising firm in the US, and the fourth largest in the world. It was founded in 1864 by William James Carlton and went through several transformations before settling into its current form. JWT is a subsidiary of WPP, or Wire and Plastic Products. Founded in 1971, it was evenutally bought out by Martin Sorrell, who has since turned it into one of the world's six most successful advertising holding companies, and then into the world's second-largest communications services group. This company, still named Wire and Plasitc Products [who began as wire-shopping cart manufacturers], managed to buy at the tender age of sixteeen a major advertising firm over a hundred years old. Not really related to the diamond industry itself, just an interesting thing to note. In any case, these are the people that handle world diamond advertising.
Remember how I said there was an exception to the value of diamonds? Here it is. A diamond dealer will NEVER buy a diamond from you. If your goal is to sell a diamond for monetary gain, you have three choices: sell it to a licensed diamond purchasing center, [where they eventually wind up back in De Beers' hands], sell it to a pawn shop, or sell it on the street. Ironically, you'd probably make the most money selling it on the street, seeing as you will only make a minimal fraction of return in a pawn shop or purchasing center; even if you bought the diamond at noon today, and sold it at five o'clock the same evening, your sale price could drop as much as ninety-five percent. That's right, the value of your diamond could drop by ninety-five percent...usually depreciation only gets that high if the diamond is older, and therefore is of a less popular cut or color, but it can still happen with brand new diamonds, and even if it doesn't the average depreciation of a diamond immediately after purchase is still above sixty percent. For this to make sense [or rather, not make sense] to you, you must realize that although your ability to make any gainful return is not actually depreciation of a diamond's actual value, it is still treated for the purposes of resale as depreciation. But that really isn't a factor for the larger portion of diamond owners, because we've been brainwashed to think that selling your fiancee's or grandma's emotionally priceless carbon rock to a thug who's going to put it in his teeth is morally reprehensible, haven't we? Most consumer-level diamond owners only turn to the selling of the pretty rock in times of desperation and need, such has been the extraordinary efficiency of market limitations and advertising.
Speaking of brainwashing, why is it that people want to own diamonds in the first place? Aren't they just useless hunks of rock? Well, yes, unless you're a physics student with access to a class IV laser (output capacity greater than 500 miliwatts) and a thesis about light refraction that needs to be written, then yes. In 1938, a company named N.W. Ayer was contracted by De Beers to create a demand for something that was and is, as previously stated, a useless lump of carbon. Thus the diamond engagement ring was born, along witht the famous phrase, "Diamonds are Forever." We've been fucked from behind with the advertising machine that has psychologically conditioned us to the importance and symbolism behind diamonds ever since. Don't forget the moviestar appeal; Ayer deliberately used the releatively new motion picture industry to fan the flames of the diamond's rise to power. Marilyn Monroe told the world who was her best friend in 1953, and Bond, James Bond has had two forays in overcoming diamond smugglers, once in 1971 and again in 2004. In the late 1950's diamond mines were discovered in Siberia, but they only produced miniature diamonds; this posed little problem to De Beers, who, through aggressive advertising, created a previously nonexistent market in older women for these smaller diamonds in the form of the Anniversary Diamond. In 1967, these same tactics were applied against the nation of Japan, where the average rate of women receiving a diamond engagement ring upon marriage proposal was only five percent. By 1971, that rose to sixty percent. Ah, but we also cannot forget the human propensity that has existed since cavemen that facilitates this manipulative subterfuge; the unconquerable instinct to look at a shiny object and go, "oooOOOooOoo, pretty..."
So, how much are diamonds really worth? Well, really not as much as you pay for them. As mentioned before, what you are paying for is the privelege of buying from the current year's stock, which has been limited by De Beers. I have been saying and will keep saying De Beers because nearly every diamond in the world is under their control. They don't mine all of them, but they purchase nearly all of them, and then behave as you would if you had an untouchable monopoly. They strangle the market. Canada alone has produced five million carats during the years of 2001-2005. Maybe that seems insignificant, but it means that if one out of every three-hundred-thirty people buy one one-carat diamond a year, then Canada alone could supply America with its entire annual diamond trade. America is the world's largest diamond purchaser, but Canada only supplies fifteen percent of the world's diamond supply. If these numbers make you scratch your head and say, "wait a minute," fear not; they do not, in fact, make any sense. UNLESS! You figure in the fact that less than twenty percent of all the diamonds mined this year will not be put on the market; of that number, most of them will be "investment grade," and not for sale on the public market. WHY? Why, to drive the "value" of diamonds through the roof! Diamonds are not actually rare, they're just hard to accquire thanks to all the cartel-like diamond companies, most of whom [again] sell their products to De Beers, who sells it to you at a higher cost.
These are all economics and the cost of Capitalism, of course. Now let's get into the scary shit.
While the vast majority of diamonds are mined in Africa, more than half of them are processed in India. Who cuts and polishes them, you ask? Well, who would you employ if you were a vain billionaire asshole with no morals on the board of one of the richest corporations in the world? Why, the labor that costs next to nothing, of course. Wait, wait. Strike that, reverse it. Why, the labor that costs you NOTHING, of course. Bonded children, yes children, in India work at refining those pretty little light-catchers on your finger to pay off the debts of their relatives, many times unsuccessfully. When unsuccessful, the diamond bastards buy their debt to have a labor force of indentured workers who end up passing their debt on to their younger siblings and many times, their own children; who, obviously, work for the diamond bastards for free to pay off the debt that they will give to THEIR children. Wait, let's clarify all of that with an example. Fred is an Indian diamond processor in India [work with me here...let's give them more American names so that we stupid Americans can potentially connect a little bit more with these victims, rather than being focused on "funny-sounding names"]. He is paid a wage, and provided with food, water, and shelter while on the job. Come payday, Fred gets a negative check. You see, the cost of his provided food, water, and shelter cost the company money. Rather than calling it a cost of business, the company expects reimbursment from Fred, and garnishes his wages. Said garnishing costs more than Fred made, so now Fred is in debt to the company. This debt will continue to grow, and Fred will die before it is paid. Fred's son, Bob, is now responsible for the debt, and must pay the company. Bob really has no choice but to work for his father's company to achieve this, but is actually happy to do it; where Fred's family lives, employment is a rare beast, indeed. Bob gets to have a job now, and so goes for the gusto! All the while, the debt keeps on growing. The company never intends to call the debt in, of course, they just want indentured labor. Which, as the generations go on, causes the children of indentured families to have to work for the company at earlier and earlier ages until now, you have Tim, Bob's six-year-old great-great-great grandchild, is now working for the company. Worst of all, Tim's father Ken is trying to have another child for the deliberate purpose of creating another family worker. Are we disgusted yet? No? Good, 'cause there's more.
Back in Africa, were almost all of the world's diamonds are mined, diamond mines, even when not open-pit mines, are usually situated on land that belongs to the native people. While some remain when the mine is opened, most move or are forcably displaced. Those that do stay do so with a great and continuous risk to their health, livelihoods, and indigenous cultures. Good time to bring up the environmental damage, I think. Open-pit mines [by far the most common due to low costs] regularly deposit large quantities of free radicals [microscopic metals responsible for carving up your arteries...but more on that in another post], heavy minerals, chemicals from mining equipment, organisms, salts, oils, and other pollutants into ground water near the mine. All of these leech into the water table, and endanger or kill downstream plants and animals, as well as nearby villages, indigenous tribes, and [let's not forget] THE MINING CAMPS. That's the most audacious thing to me. You are forced to go to work, forced to dump some really nasty shit into the water that you will be forced to drink tonight when you get "home;" [it's either that or don't drink - not much of a choice] that's also the thing that makes you shit blood and work less effectively tomorrow, so you either get whipped or shot, and then the process repeats itself. Wow.
But let's not think about the health risks to the miners. Let's not think about the rampaging epidemics of AIDS traveling through mining camps. Wait, AIDS? What AIDS? Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that there are no women allowed at the mines...but the corporations are nice enough to provide the men with sex slaves. "Whoopee! Condoms? What condoms? We don't need no steenking condoms! Even if we did, and even IF we could afford them, there is no supply of your high quality American hoity-toity condoms! So, with no condom, I will boff this ugly boy of twleve in the posterior while pretending he is Elizabeth Hurley, and then I will go home and, also with no condom, boff my wife in the posterior while pretending that she, also, is Elizabeth Hurley. Haha, I'm on the fast track to SEXUALLY TRANSMITTED DISEASE?!!?! Well, shit. At least my health plan covers...never mind. Well, at least the company will pay for my funeral...never mind. Well, at least I'll have a decent burial...never mind. At least they will burn my body in accordance with my religious beliefs...never mind. At least I'll have the opportunity to worry about this without having to worry about immediate dangers like cave-ins or pit collapses or...never mind." I know I've been talking for a long time by now, but I won't bore you even more with the numbers of deaths a year in diamond-mining operations in Africa...actually, that's not true. The reason I won't tell you is because I can't. The mines don't keep records like that, and even liberal-media powerhouses like CNN are unable to confirm or deny the existence of mass miner graves in Zimbabwe, Angola, OR the Sierra Leone. But, something tells me it's safe to assume that it is an offensive number.
Now, it's time to talk about Conflict diamonds! Yay! "Conflict Diamonds" is the term that is given to diamonds that are stolen from diamond companies or mined by rebel forces to fund civil conflict. These diamonds are then smuggled out of the home country, into another country, and sold to provide the rebel armies with resources needed to perpetuate the fight. Not that I have ANYTHING against the rebels. Hell, if I was in the same position, I guarantee I would spill blood for free rather than work to produce familial debt. BUT! What I wouldn't do, is employ children to fight in the battles. For ten points, who employs children in civil conflict, the Diamond Companies or the Rebels? DING! Both! Why? It's cheap! Geez, don't you people catch on? The children fighting for the rebels have to deal with being forced to kill their own people or be killed by their own people. Not good choices for a developing mind to make...but most of them die anyway, so I guess there's no permanent damage - especially since they are given mind-altering drugs to disinhibit them to performing atrocities and to supress their fear. That's good. The Diamond Companies are implicit in all of this because they do not care where the diamonds come from, just that they come. The spice must flow, and the companies in question will employ armies of children as long as it does. Conflict Diamond sales also inflame the production of small arms by increasing the ability to purchase them, thereby increasing the demand. There are over 500 billion small arms in the world...the beach boys could write a song entitled "500 handguns for every boy," and they kill 500,000 people annually [I guess that statistic is better - even though everyone can have five hundred pistols, it takes 1000 pistols to kill one person in a year...yes, a much less scary statistic]. These numbers are bloated by the hundreds of millions of dollars of conflict diamonds traded yearly.
But, you know, all this doom and gloom. I think it would be nice to end the lesson for today on a bright note. So let's talk about the things that actually make them so unique. You know, the things that make them really neat.
Firstly, let's talk about the rarity of diamonds. Forgetting the fact that the current concept of a diamond's rarity is a creation of De Beers' desire to prevent diamonds from becoming a semi-precious stone, that's exactly what a diamond is: a semi-precious stone. There are no other elements in a diamond other than carbon, and that particular element is the most common one found in the crust of the Earth. Even though a diamond is made from the most common material in the Earth, it still requires the moving of two-hundred-and-fifty tons of ore to find one pea-sized diamond. That's a 22,000,000:1 ratio. And among those, only twenty percent will find their way to market as gem-quality; all the others are only good for industrial purposes. That's pretty neat.
Secondly, diamonds are an allotrope. When any chemical element creates a bond with itslef in a way that produces a stable material with unique characteristics, that material is an allotrope. Carbon has two common allotropes, graphite and diamond. In diamonds, the carbon atoms bond with each other covalantly in a tetrahedral [or cube-face] lattice, while in graphite, carbon bonds to itself to create a sheet of hexagons, which perpendicularly lay over one another to create the material we find in pencil leads and industrial lubricants and bearings. All of the traits that make diamonds diamonds are specifically because of this lattice structure, the very short covalent bonds in that exact shape make the structure of the material incredibly strong, and almost impervious to impurity. The actual color of a pure diamond should be completely clear; it is only from these impurities that colored stones arise. For every one million atoms of carbon in a diamond lattice, there is usually only one atom of another element, and this is known as the carbon flaw. The elements boron [which makes a diamond blue], nitrogen [yellow diamonds], and hydrogen [varying colors] are, in fact, the only elements known that can exploit the carbon flaw. Green diamonds are formed by irradiation of alpha particles. That's all really neat.
Thirdly, the actual properties of diamonds. On both the Mohs and Vickers scales of hardness, diamonds rank at the highest possible scores. But the story is not that simple. By the Vickers method, there are several materials harder than diamond, with all of them save for one being other forms of carbon. Scientists have been trying for years to create a material synthetically that is harder than diamond, and have met with little success. Although there are several new developments in this area with materials such as c-BN and modification of B-28, the most promising advance came in February of 2009 when Natalia Dubrovinskaia and her team created a mosaic of wurtzite [a boron-nitrogen compund that appears to be able to flex its chemical structure in reaction to stress]. Even with this compound being reportedly close to the hardness of diamond, it doesn't trump two other forms of carbon, Ionsdaleite and Nanodiamonds. Ionsdaleite seems to be the conflux of graphite and diamond, with a three-dimensional hexagonal lattice, while nanodiamonds are simply so small that the shortness of their chemical bonds renders them more than twice as hard as normal diamonds. Aside from hardness, diamonds are an excellent diffuser of light, which makes them ideal for holography or laser applications. Should the interior of a diamond ever be able to be artifically modified to trap beams of light, a diamond could be an efficient and safe way to store digital data [although such and advance would be ltierally generations away]. Save for a unique variant of diamond, the material is an incredibly efficient electrical insulator [the variant is a boron impure diamond, and it is already being developed and tested for use as a semiconductor]. All of these traits from simple carbon, produced only from the arrangement of its atoms. Awesomely neat.
Fourthly, the myth about the durablility of diamonds. If you read the paragraph above, you might be scratching your head right now. Diamonds may be really hard, but that does not necessarily make them durable. Way earlier, I mentioned that we would talk about diamond damage. So now we will. With steel, the more the steel is forged and hardened, the more brittle it becomes. Diamonds are the same. It takes one to three billion years to make a diamond from carbon under conditions present only one hundred miles deep into the crust; that's a very long time in the forge. Diamonds are, in fact, very brittle, and can be split with a simple hammer strike to a pointed tool with a moderate amount of force. The application of force in directions against the tetrahedral lattice can cause shards to break off of diamonds, as well, resulting in chips, dings, and even slivers of the rock falling off. This is precisely how diamonds are cut, using one of several specific processes and a modicum of skill [you didn't really think they came out of the ground that way, did you?...so, why do people still believe they are invulnerable?]. Diamonds can even be polished by erosion techniques. In an oxygen-free environment at 1700 degrees Celsius, a diamond will convert to graphite, and it will melt in air at temperatres passing 700 degrees Celsius[this is why diamond tools are not a very good choice when working with smelting metals such as iron]. They are, in short, far from indestructible.
Lastly, we have extraterrestrial diamonds. That's right, diamonds from space. Carbonado is a particular type of alien diamond, black in color and more porous than normal diamonds. They hitched a ride on an asteroid and can now be found in alluvial deposits in Brazil and the Central African Republic. The pores in these diamonds can hold presolar grains from outside of our system [seeing as the definition of presolar is that they were formed before our solar system was, and they date the formation of the carbonados to about three billion years ago], and these inclusions can also hold radioactive isotopes that make some carbonados photoluminescent. Arthur C. Clarke forwarded a theory that is now being pursued that the core of the planet Jupiter is, in fact, one garganutan diamond. Although it is merely speculation at this point, there is other credible research that shows the cores of white dwarf stars could be diamonds. Radioactive luminescent black diamonds from space and planet-sized sparklies...REALLY neat.
But the point is, how neat are diamonds? Pretty neat, to be sure, and very beautiful, but is what you pay for such a neat little trinket at the jeweler's counter worth the price of misery, suffering, and death? The cost of the diamonds have already been paid in blood, and now the extraordinarily wealthy wish to extract another fee for its taste, this time from the unwitting consumer. A consumer for whom a market has been created from nothing, with a product that can be no other thing than a manufactured want.
What else can I say? Diamonds aren't bad [in fact, they're pretty cool], but the people responsible for making them available to you are very very bad. Diamonda are not a viable economic commodity. Don't buy diamonds. There are several other billion reasons to not buy diamonds, and they are all green. Possibly the very shade of green that flushes over all the other ladies' faces at the party when your crafted carbon chunk sparkles from the finger that nonchalantly assists in wafting that $300 bottle of white wine in your crystal flute under your upturned nose. But hey, if these are not good enough reasons for you, think about how much sophistication it really takes to be awed by a sparkly rock and think, "ooooOOoooOoo, pretty..."
If you think I'm full of shit, then here are some pages with more information than I care to distribute for you to check out.
Additional Reading:
Le Billon, Philippe, "Angola’s Political Economy of War: The Role of Oil and Diamonds, 1975-2000," African Affairs, (2001), 100, p.55-80
Edward Jay Epstein, "The Rise and Fall of Diamonds: The Shattering of an Illusion" (Simon & Schuster, 1982).
--OSK
