But the reality, experts and workers say, is more complicated. Switching en masse to lab-made gems may have environmental upsides, and relieve companies of reputational risks. But it could disfranchise the same communities that consumers are concerned for – and it comes at a moment when traceable, ethically mined gems are more accessible than ever.
‘Something is wrong’
“If you start to grow diamonds in a lab, you’re not only taking away a job, but you’re also closing down communities and closing down countries,” says Urica Primus. “How will [miners] survive, how will they sustain themselves, their livelihoods, their families?”
Artisanal mining is terrible because it’s shitty work for little money. So, let’s stop it.
But, if we do stop it, then where will people be able to get their shitty work for little money?
There’s an episode of StarTrek where an alien tries to tempt Capt Kirk with gems and he’s like ” We can make these by the ton on the Enterprise.”
This surely is the whole issue – gems are valued because their production takes millions of years and some poor bastard in Shitholia has to dig them up and then some Jewish guy in Antwerp turns them into a necklace. They are rare and a lot of work has gone into them.
Make them in a lab and they have no value except to stick onto an oil drill.
Another cri de coeur from the buggy whip manufacturers.
Now here’s Roger with the sport.
Perish the thought that this is all about the diamond trade rather than the diamond miners. And that the whole blood diamond thing was about whether DeBeers had had a slice of any sale.
True Rhoda.
Funny, the lefties usually get this wrong the other way. Nike has shoes made in Crapistan by workers earning $3 a day in hot, cramped factories. Let’s stop buying these shoes! Of course, the workers lose those lousy jobs & have to go back to worse ones.
“Make them in a lab and they have no value except to stick onto an oil drill.”
I also think jewellery is all played out. People have come up with other substitutes: Chanel sunglasses, Apple products, and cubic zirconia looks like diamonds at almost any distance.
A “hand hewn” market segment could allow for a premium. Just need to think something beginning with C to indicate the number of backs broken to produce the gem and let the diamond marketers do their thang.
Organic diamonds, Hallowed Be?
Boganboy- hehe Yep, but i suppose the lab ones are organic too.
Organic! but what about the Carbon?
Diamonds can’t be organic, the life processes that define ‘organic’ don’t happen 300 miles down in the Mantle. You may be stuck with ‘Born Naturally from the Living Earth’ or some such flummery.
Mr Pendantic
Funny, the lefties usually get this wrong the other way. Nike has shoes made in Crapistan by workers earning $3 a day in hot, cramped factories. Let’s stop buying these shoes! Of course, the workers lose those lousy jobs & have to go back to worse ones.
For some reason, the Left have always believed poor people to be stupid. You can trace this back to the industrial revolution (and probably even further) with the pit and factory owners exploiting those who were defenceless. But those owners weren’t going out into the countryside and rounding people up to press-gang them into work – their workers moved to the new industrial towns in search of a better life. Some found it, some didn’t – of course, but life’s like that. You see exactly the same thing today in the slums of (e.g.) Bombay or Dhaka as our good host can confirm. Everyone there is there voluntarily. Their life may look shit to us, but it’s better than what they left behind.
Sweatshops in Bangladesh are terrible because it’s shitty work for little money. Of course in those countries, teaching Grade 3 is even shittier work for even less money. Any right-minded worker would sooner starve.