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Diamonds are not rare, not tough, have no intrinsic value, are a terrible investment and all an round scam. So, how did diamond sellers convince hundreds of millions of people in multiple different cultures to spend fortunes on a rock with no real value?
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Diamonds are not scarce. Well, they used to be until they were discovered in South Africa in 1870, then there was an oversupply and they were all over the place.
Enter De Beers and Cecil Rhodes
Enter De Beers and Cecil Rhodes
Realising that that diamonds had no use in the world other than being "scarce" & "nice", De Beers bought out all the diamond mines in the world and then created artificial scarcity by hogging diamonds and whole mines, thus controlling the amount of diamonds in the market
It worked! People around the world genuinely believe diamonds are incredibly rare, despite diamond mines in South Africa, Russia, Botswana, India, Russia, Brazil, China, Canada and The US absolutely filled with diamonds. You can go there and find millions of them lying around
But, Diamonds are Forever. NOT! They may be the hardest naturally occurring substance on Earth but they're extremely fragile, ask anyone who has had her diamond ring chipped or discolured. This is because there's a difference between "hard" and "tough"
Yes, diamonds don't last forever. They tend to degrade into graphite after a while. It's always been just a marketing scam. This marketing scam to be precise:
Harry Oppenheimer of De Beers, had hired advertising agency N.W. Ayers to increase the demand for diamonds. The idea was to indoctrinate the public with the idea that diamonds were a gift of love, that the larger and finer the diamond, the greater the expression of love
Essentially, any man who wasn't spending 2 months of his salary on a diamond ring for the woman he loves was not a real man. Hook. Line. Sinker. Men started going into debt just to get the finest and biggest diamond they could "afford". Because diamonds now equaled romance
Oppenheimers ad agency opened an office in Hollywood and would give out diamonds to movie makers (remember diamonds are very cheap, so it cost them nothing). The film producers would then showcase the diamonds in a favourable way in their movies
They brainwashed men into believing that a man should surprise his woman by presenting her with a diamond. "Surprise" is the keyword here. Because if the woman were to be part of the decision, she might have other ideas of which non-diamond stone she wanted!
Because diamonds were being mined in British colonies, Ayers convinced the queen of England to wear them instead of other stones. Now diamonds were associated with royalty!
Ayers and De Beers didn't stop with just men. They in fact even gave "lectures" in high schools "revolving around the diamond ring" - targeting girls. They created a link between diamonds and romance in the minds of people before they were even adults!
Diamond prices skyrocketed! But, there was a problem: people started buying and selling them. So, De Beers convinced the public that it was taboo to sell your diamond ring. Diamonds are Forever. You should keep them forever
The whole economy of the world is just one giant farce, from money, to finance, to diamonds. But it works and will continue to because people are simply too busy propping up the system to realise what they're propping up.
