I would like to take this moment to thank https://diamondssuck.com/ for preventing me from buying my wife a diamond, and getting her a much prettier moissanite instead. It's been on hn's front page several times.
But if you apprise your fiancé of the alternatives / opp costs (moissanite, man made, second hand, etc) and she still wants a new diamond, just get her a new diamond. It will make her happy for years.
My wife had her heart set on a pink diamond, so that’s what I got her. I made it clear though that if I got this, she is not getting a new one for a long time (she has a tendency to want to rent / sample / change things up). So to her credit she did her homework and spent a few months picking the best one.
Now everytime we go out and she wears it, I can see how she’s happy. It’s worth it to me to see a gift keep giving.
In particular, if you're marrying someone, getting a grip on what she might appreciate for years is a good first step, especially as the premise is the discussion has already been started in the couple and she voices her own opinions.
How it goes down from there is probably a microcosm of how they'll deal with their future decisions.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
There is a whole Wiki page about it! [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_gustibus_non_est_disputandu...
I am a person who doesn't wish to spend $20,000 on a rock so that my wife won't be embarrassed in front of her friends. And that is why I chose to marry a woman who thinks that spending $20,000 on a rock is a silly thing to do.
That was my point. If you married someone who doesn't like diamonds, fine.
The original comment was about "shenanigans like buying something else and passing it off as a diamond". Isn't there anything your partner likes? Would you buy something else because you don't wish to spend $X on Y, "passing it off as Y", and embarrass her in front of her friends?
Same thing, just that's more convincing to some people/shows it's not 'cheaping out', it's just a better deal.
That's not the argument, AIUI. The argument is "Go ahead and spend $FOO on a rock, just be sure not to lie about how much you spent".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_labour_in_the_diamond_...
It actually doesn't matter how she finds out that you lied to her about the biggest life change she will ever experience for the rest of her life. What matters is that lying to a person you want to marry is a sure-fire way to end the marriage at some definite future point.
Arguing that it's okay because you will never be found out isn't relevant.
I didn't argue this at all, and in a reply to another comment below, 3 hours before your comment, I made it clear that all I was saying was that it's a bit farfetched to say someone is going to be embarrassed in front of her friends because of the ring.
> I didn't argue this at all,
I apologise. In the bit that I quoted, specifically this sentence:
>>>> I would think the only way the wife would know is [...]
it appeared to me that you were arguing that the wife would never know unless [...] happened. To me, that sentence implies deceiving the wife.
Maybe, but even in that case, you can't trust a spouse to do the cutting off because they are most definitely not unbiased.
If the cousin in question would have cut off ties without his wife telling him to, you might have a point, but the way the OP phrased it makes it seem, to me, that it was done due to instructions from the wife.
Adults have free will.
But we were living in Europe at the time, and the wedding was going to be in Maryland, so we had to get a wedding coordinator to make it go well. And she introduced us to florists, chefs, photographers, etc....
She helped make that wedding the best it could possibly be, and I don't regret any of the money we spent. Nor does my wife. That was one of the best events we have ever participated in, and over the decades we still get positive comments from our friends who were present there.
So, yeah. It was a lot of money. But we feel it was money well spent.
It's one of the few smart things to spend money on.
Precisely why I prefer small intimate events with my friends and don’t want a big event like a wedding.
And yet, during both those times you will have no meaningful engagement with all those people you care about.
If you want your wedding to be a meaningful event, you need to keep it small; the larger a party[1] is, the less engagement the host will get with the average attendee.
[1] You shouldn't forget that a wedding is nothing more than an expensive party that everyone else will forget.
This was not my experience at all, for what it's worth.
You had a large number of guests and meaningfully engaged with all of them?
So? I didn't assert that you wouldn't remember, I asserted that in a large party the host cannot meaningfully engage with everyone.
Mining is still dangerous work. The workers are still underpaid. The profits are still stolen by companies that are literally the vestiges of European colonialism.
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/09/03/africa/marine-diamond-min...
None of your comments applies to any of the mines mentioned; Canada, Australia, and the marine operations all abide by OSHA regulations and pay good wages.
If you want to make a specific comment about conflict diamonds, for example, it pays to be aware that it's not just mining that sucks in war zones .. quality of life is pretty poor all around.
There are mines I wouldn't work in, there are many mines I'd have no issue working in.
Which mines have you you worked in and what was your role?
Granted, maybe there are good mines out there, but I still think commercial extraction of resources is almost surely damaging to its surrounding environment. You can justify that for some useful material, but it's hard to justify it for diamonds.
Mining in general I view as a somewhat neccesary evil that needs to made humane for workers and as something driven by unthinking consumption, the remedy lies upstream from mines in the mindsets of populations that demand resources.
Resource extraction can't be eliminated but it can be reduced, as should population numbers.
Doesn't it matter what he thinks?
Does "If she wants to eat meat despite knowing all the misery the food industry spreads, then you should probably break up" sound like a good idea to a guy who isn't vegan/vegatarian/etc?
And yeah of course what he thinks matters too. If you're both awful people then you deserve each other.
I'm just saying it's not fair to say they were industrial abrasives before debeers marketing came along.
Or eats dessert.
Or likes flashy cars.
There's some level that is perfectly healthy, as long as it doesn't interfere with the important stuff.
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If she says "diamond ring or else I don't want you"...that's bad.
If she says "I prefer a diamond ring, but either way I want you"...nothing wrong with that.
Thankfully I found her. I also had a talk with her dad about it after I met him and he called diamonds a scam. So she gets it and I'm happy.
(Please no one get pedantic on ring cost to me, absolutely not the point of this comment)
Also, ‘a few days salary’ rather defeats the rituals purpose.
If the desire is emotional, then there’s no reasoning with it anyway. (And not everything in life need be logical.)
You might not value it, but I dare say you value things that I don't value.
Define artificial tradition. Yes someone can invent it, but it requires people to actually adopt it. All the trappings of Christmas were invented by someone. They aren't 'artificial' though
Artificial tradition as in created by a marketing campaign to sell a product. Same things as eating “KFC on Christmas” in Japan or more recently “Happy Honda Days” just slightly older and more widespread.
>Value is defined in free markets by what you can sell something for
So if someone can sell you a diamond for X, it is worth X. So the diamond is worth what you're paying.
Was Christmas created to sell Christianity?
I just don't get the distinction. A 'natural' tradition isn't somehow more wholesome, we've just forgotten who invented it. And the meaning still derives from the people partaking in that tradition.
Note quite, when most people buy land the seller doesn’t receive the full amount you pay realtors get their cut of the transaction. Same deal with used cars etc, the transaction costs are removed from the sales price when calculating value.
Commercial Diamonds are just an unusually extreme case.
> I just don't get the distinction. A 'natural' tradition isn't somehow more wholesome, we've just forgotten who invented it. And the meaning still derives from the people partaking in that tradition.
The meaning of diamonds still derives from advertising which is the haven’t stopped because people stop caring when they do. This clearly demonstrates the artificial nature of what’s happening.
Nobody needs to advertise saying excuse me if you bump into someone in a crowd, that has been maintained culturally for a long time without outside influence.
Saying someone created it therefore it’s all the same is a meaningless statement. People create different things, saying someone created something doesn’t imply what that thing is.
In my country house selling generally uses an agency model, I (optionally) employ someone to market my house.
I get the full value, and then pay them a fee.
A second hand car seller sells the car, they make money by adding value. If I choose to buy a car I can go direct to a seller but they may not have want I want, may not be available at convenient times, and I'll have less come back if things go wrong.
>Saying someone created it therefore it’s all the same is a meaningless statement. People create different things, saying someone created something doesn’t imply what that thing is.
You're implying who created that thing is more important than what the thing is.
So can we agree that it's the thing that's important, not who made it.
It really doesn’t matter how the transaction is structured, sellers can do that legwork themselves but that’s also a cost. If you sell your house for 1 million and taxes eat 10k and the agents eat 10k then the house must be worth 980k to you because that’s what ends up in your bank account.
Which is why economics define the term value as what the seller keeps after selling something because if the seller thinks it’s worth more than that they wouldn’t do the transaction.
> You’re implying who created the thing is more importantly than what the thing is.
No I am arguing what maintains the thing is important. People argue about who created the first iconic foods lie Philly Cheese Stake or Deep Dish Pizza etc, but they don’t need to actively maintain its cultural inertia.
Diamond engagement rings on the other hand only exist with active effort on the part of Diamond Merchants. Which is why they keep being advertised as such.
It’s trivial to make an idea like an advertising slogan catch on when you’re blasting it over the airwaves regularly, but people very quickly forget about them without regular reinforcement. Here’s some of the most famous US slogans from the 20th century fill in the brand: "All the News That's Fit to Print", "Sometimes you feel like a nut. Sometimes you don't.", "Where's the beef?" "The pause that refreshes"
If you’re old enough you might even remember them or the equivalent from where you live, but they aren’t going to roll off the tongue the way more recent examples like “_ eat Fresh”, “Just do it”, “The Best a Man Can Get”, “Like a good neighbor, _ is there.” etc do. Those slogans aren’t better, the difference is just recent advertising budgets.
Christmas today looks nothing like Christmas in 1900, across the world.
Most of the foods today (and I'm not talking about fast food) were invented in the same period. At least their modern incarnations, sometimes they have really old names but the old versions had very little in common with the current food.
Documentation isn’t that great, but back in the 1450’s people decorated fir trees with apples alongside other ornaments which is the origin of modern round ornaments. By the 1530 there where rules limiting people to one tree in their homes. Massachusetts outlawed Christmas celebrations back in 1659 outside of Church attendance.
The tradition had spread well outside of Germany even back in 1841 Winser Castle had a Christmas Tree.
Christmas in Eastern Europe and most other places looked nothing like that. Heck, Seychelles and Hawaii decorate their local trees like they're fir trees in Scandinavia.
> Yes the tradition spread, but people don’t live in the same place our ancestors did 600 years ago either.
Yes, they do :-)
The vast majority of people, especially in underdeveloped or developing countries, DO live in the general area where their ancestors moved during the last migration, which for some was thousands of years ago. People really don't move away unless it's easy or they're forced to.
And my comment also included stuff like food. Most current food is modern.
Even just within Africa there’s been a huge amount of migration recently.
Not all of this was even voluntarily. I have ancestors that trace back to Spanish Armada in 1588 getting stuck in England.
> Most current food is modern.
Only by the strictest interpretation of recipes. Most food is remixes of ancient staples like bread and cheese, or like tomatoes local plants that spread hundreds of years ago.
You could get a cheeseburger, as in ground beef topped with cheese served on a bun, going back to antiquity. Thomas Jefferson had "potatoes served in the French manner" at a White House dinner in 1802. Thin sliced potatoes boiled in oil may have first entered the western diet all the way back in 1623, but we don’t know what "papas fritas" means.
Staples like rice are obviously ancient and still make up a large part of peoples diets.
Meat was super expensive for most people, it was hardly a mass market thing to be eaten every day.
I could go on and on :-)
Thomas Jefferson was an American elite. Americans have had it much better, or at least richer, than most of the rest of the world, for far longer.
That said meat was more common than generally portrayed. Fish has been a staple food in much of the world for a long time. Dramatically lower human population until recently means overfishing has largely been a more recent concern.
But we also look at the ethics of most diamonds. And aside custom lab grown, child exploitation and murder are the norm.
I ethically refuse to pay any money into that system of child exploitation, child murder, and mass violence.
It’s ok to be picky.
Buying a lottery ticket when the jackpot hits a billion dollars and blowing 100k in Las Vegas are both gambling, but the first is essentially harmless fun while the second is a sign of deeper issues.
A line should be drawn when the irrationality of one causes inarguable and debilitating friction in the relationships of that person.
In other words : It's okay to be the person who loves pink, dresses in pink, bathes in pink -- until it disallows that person to find meaningful work/friends/mates/whatever; then it's more than just human irrationality, it's the inability to cope with others and the world at large.
It’s also not particularly uncommon for divorcing couples to still have sex and even care for each other deeply. Based on one study something like ~6% of divorces result in the couple remarrying each other and of those marriages only 30% or so end in a second divorce.
Positional goods have real effects, mediated by other people, in a way that astrology doesn't directly.
Reducing the role of such things is often good life advice, and pushing back on mined diamonds in particular is morally motivated as well, but I don't think it's right to consider it the same as astrology.
How about spirituality or religion?
From poor people destroying their lives in Congo open pit mines to deBeers laughing in your face when selling you small rock which is not that rare for as much money as you are willing to accept. And if you got any form of certificate from then that your specific diamond is not blood diamond, well that paper has less value than used toilet paper, nobody could ever check or enforce that. So people here mentioning how their wives glow when looking at diamonds, well they are looking at shiny human suffering. And if future wife doesn't care enough about that, well you just learned a very interesting personality trait of her, without the need to go through years of relationship.
You’re being pretty harsh on yourself there. Wealth doesn’t only depend on your own efforts and behavior, but a myriad other things. Also, how do you calculate whether they are left with more than you? Is that about inflation adjusted wealth, or other things like education, resilience, number of hours spent with their dad, physical and mental health?
Financially, yes, I need to leave them better off than me, inflation adjusted of course. Education, good habits, good examples, all of these things matter to me as well.
I think the latter is tricky and there’s no guarantee, but we go out of our way to always leave shame out of the equation (big relationship destroyer), and make them socialize (again, if they want to). Eg we have a car with extra seats so we can drive their friends too. We‘re also investing heavily (considering our finances) by putting them in a Montessori school where they can mingle with kids freely, with more teachers available to quell any mobbing.
For me, raising a child is about raising a functioning future adult.
Bunging them £x000 when (hopefully) they're in their 60s seems a bit too late for me to have done my job properly.
Further, what does the parent expect from their parents when they die? Are they going to be annoyed if they don't get 'enough'?
Also, it’s possible to prove some negatives. Mostly though the definitions of terms.
Let’s assume we could kill off all the sociopaths, your point is?
A goldfish can’t be an environmentalist so some minimum cognitive function is required thus demonstrating a genetic component. Note however that doesn’t suggest a goldfish or a human with such extremely diminished capacity is evil. Your good/evil axis and environmentalism is thus clearly separated.
Even if you assume as you suggest there is some good or evil DNA suggesting “it’s racist” would imply a specific distribution of these genes along racial lines. Which is itself deeply offensive because it comes from a place of deep seated racism.
People of extremely diminished capacity are also still worthy of adoption. I could go on, but people as horrible as you should be shunned.
Show me any evidence that cognitive capacity of humans depends on genes.
> Note however that doesn’t suggest a goldfish or a human with such extremely diminished capacity is evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eichmann_in_Jerusalem
> People of extremely diminished capacity are also still worthy of adoption
I never suggested otherwise.
Of course these days by the time you get to the jewelry phase, this kind of matchmaking is usually resolved anyway. I suspect the tradition started much longer ago when folks got married very quickly (compared to today’s standards).
That variety of woman is best rented.
Sometimes it's no big deal, and I'd recommend your advice. But if it is a big deal for someone, then just be up front about it and why you will/won't do it.
If she is apprised of the alternatives and still demands "No I want EXPENSIVE shiny thing" then it's cultural shaming factoring into the decision making. You have to reevaluate what she sees you as: an actual human being, or a provider mannequin whose validity as a partner depends on subjecting yourself to arbitrary ceremonial consumerist prostrations.
Let people live their lives and you do you. People aren't a "provider mannequin" just because they like to make their partner happy.
I know that a 33k Mazda3 and a 33k Honda Civic are "similar", but neither of them are exactly worth the same 33 thousand dollars. But who cares, really? Ultimately, even a 33k purchase is a "throw" away. You're not gonna compare control arm thickness to find the better value, and you're not gonna examine where the materials came from.
there is also a great distinction between "Yeah I know another helping of chocolate syrup on my ice cream is a bad decision, but it'll make me feel good today.", and "You need to make a 10kUSD+ purchase on a totally arbitrary piece of jewelry that very well may have incited real human suffering and violence, even though I know that desire is irrational and poorly balanced."
I would assume -- maybe incorrectly, I admit -- that this form of irrationality would follow the individual and subsequently the entire relationship.
We all have different 'red flag dictionaries', so by all means people should live their lives; but I doubt I am alone in my assumptions.
That's a tricky topic to broach. Drop one zero from the price tag, and this definitely applies much more to your smartphone and computer than it does to gems. Drop one or two more zeroes, and this covers the clothes you wear just as much.
I'm not denying you have a point here. The suffering and violence are real. But my wife and I both went down the road of paying attention to that, and we've learned one has only so much attention to pay before you can hardly purchase anything at all. Nearly everyone has a cut-off point, past which they stop digging into those issues, otherwise it becomes debilitating.
Call this irrational, but the amount of personal responsibility one should feel for some injustice they benefit from, among with a billion or two other people, is an unsolved philosophical and ethical problem.
Or, my point in short: cut people some slack.
> Call this irrational, but the amount of personal responsibility one should feel for some injustice they benefit from, among with a billion or two other people, is an unsolved philosophical and ethical problem.
I don't think it's unsolved, it's just unsolved in a way that makes people feel ok. The reality is that we regularly choose minor improvements to our lives or even just spend through laziness at a cost of other people's lives.
It's not the case here, because you're not buying gems for their practical value. If you were, then there would not be an issue - lab-grown diamonds for cutting things would be even cheaper than they are, and you wouldn't care about other gems unless you were playing with lasers or something.
As much a I hate it, the entire point of jewelry is that it's expensive and useless. It's the OG "proof of work" kind of thing - you prove your affection by burning significant resources on some piece of junk, and the recipient can use that piece of junk to prove their status to others ("look how much wealth I can burn on stupid shit", or "look how much wealth I can get someone else to burn on my behalf"). Layer a millennium of traditions and a century of De Beers marketing on top, and we get to where we are.
Being practical devalues jewelry; being cheap is opposite of its point; being alternative means being unauthentic, and makes the wearer a liar.
> The reality is that we regularly choose minor improvements to our lives or even just spend through laziness at a cost of other people's lives.
That's the unsolved part. For any given thing enjoyed by me and a billion other people, with hardly anyone talking it's wrong, I suddenly have to take some stranger's accusations and/or guilt-tripping at face value. The math goes like this:
- Surely my responsibility can't be more than one-billionth of the whole thing;
- It's not like I can actually make a difference without upending my whole life. That doesn't feel commensurate with one billionth of whatever the bad thing is;
("Voting with your wallet" is bullshit; boycotts don't work; you can't really make a dent without a large movement here, and good luck creating one over random consumer decision - you're competing with efforts to start a movement over ever other such decision, and people's attention is finite.)
- You came out of nowhere and started guilt-tripping me, it's not just inconvenient and makes me feel bad, but it's also a technique used by scammers and cultists and politicians - so why should I trust your math in the first place?
With a little hand-waving, the solution to above inequality is "I'm not going to change, and I don't like you anymore".
I'm not saying this is good - just that it is. That's the bit that's unsolved in practice.
You'll get the value of the gold in the ring but not much for the gemstone.
They want them because they are pretty and because – like it or not – it’s what society has taught them to expect.
I've been tempted to try making them at home since about 2007, but for some reason all the different people I've lived with since then have objected to me running a lightly modified microwave oven continuously for a month at a time, with a few holes in the heating cavity so I can install an inverted pyrex bowl and pipes to connect it to a low-pressure methane supply system…
That's what we are doing here! But in this case most people seems to be sympathetic to the people that suffered to get you and your wife a diamond? I don't think rich people with frivolous desires need any more "empathy"
--
[0] - It's always "some of them", "could be". The industry has blood on its hand. The particular rock you might buy your wife? Unclear. It's not like with e.g. tantalum capacitors which, at some point, AFAIK were all made out of tantalum sourced from child slavery mines in Africa. I honestly don't know if "some" diamonds are more like 50% or 5% or 0.5%.
Not unclear: as the not-blood diamond is more expensive, buying it is morally the same as buying the blood one. Now that is similar with many things that is produced and sold around the world, the problem with diamonds (and other luxury goods) is that we definitely could have a better society without it. It is not the same as giving up on iphones (which also shouldn't be produced by kids or starving people btw)
That's no excuse to continue.
In terms of living a more ethical life (on several different levels), this is a crude but generally effective way to go about it.
- Religion brings some people comfort and peace.
- Sports speak to our tribal nature evolved over millions of years.
- Sports cars are fun and exhilarating to drive and a status symbol or wealth and success, which help to attract mates.
I find making such comments very rational: They convince random observers not to support wars and child labor without any reason apart from following blind marketing.
> If you really believe that humans can or do operate "rationally" about any significant part of their lives
People can and do operate rationally from time to time: It's our main difference from the animals.
> Your definition of "rational" and the assumption that it could be universal is itself irrational.
If your definition of "rational" is supporting wars and child labor, then I indeed agree with you that you are irrational.
Yet for many other people, there is little to no practical difference in the value of those two choices. Are rich people some how less pragmatic/objective because 10k is effectively pocket change to them?
My point here is that there is no objective sense of rationality here - it's all relative to the point of the observer, and casting judgement on others from your own particular viewpoint is largely meaningless (and presumptuous).
However, I personally think the "rings must have a very expensive diamond" thing to be very silly. I know that it may be subjectively very important to the potential recipient, but that it seems to sometimes really be so inflexible feels murky in the "what normally tacit power dynamic in this relationship is this revealing?" sort of way. The only significant tangible difference between the diamond and moissanite is the mental totem: "It is a diamond, he bought a diamond for me. He wanted to buy something else but I wanted this and he got it". Which is a problem when it comes to that: that the recipient cannot budge on something so arbitrary. It feels more like the whispers of the DeBeers cultural brainwashing: "You don't deserve to have her if the sacrifice you made to purchase this wasn't big enough"
If a woman gets X amount of utility from a diamond ring over an alternative, how would it be invalid if I said I got -X utility from having to purchase it?
This is one of those hard to beat arguments where I know I'm not facing a purely rational point of view. I understand it, that's why I added the first paragraph of this response. It's one of those issues where I feel I'd need to have a Christopher Hitchens level of rhetorical skill to make any headway in my favor.
yeah but I wouldn't tell someone that seems reasonably happy with the person they married that I wouldn't marry them.
As long as we're listing the things we wouldn't do.
If I disagree with it, I'd think "their loss, sucks to have weird arbitrary standards"
If I agreed then I'd have been lying about my happiness with the relationship.
Either way some things need to be said. I haven't seen any good arguments in favor of purchasing a diamond ring which don't seem to dismiss and devalue the agency and right to an opinion of the purchaser.
Even uncut diamond crystals have a very particular "fatty" shine to it that some people might like and enjoy.
However I've seen demands that a fiancé purchase a real diamond, not a much cheaper "synthetic" one, even though it's structurally identical. That this was even a notion affirmed my assumption that the psychological importance of purchasing a diamond is tied to the price itself.
Luckily we dodged that bullet.
Whenever my wife gets comments about her moissanite, people notice it's different. Due to it's refractive index, it breaks light more and leads to a lot more colors seen when reflected back out of the stone. Loads of people just think it's a fancy diamond though since they don't know anything else and it otherwise looks very diamond like.
CZ will look about the same as diamond just not as sparkly on day one. But it's way softer, so if it's a daily wear it'll get all scratched up within several years. After 10 years of wear the difference between CZ and diamond is pretty clear.
- I love my wife!
- Well, I wouldn't marry her.
Might be the kind of communication (obviously, broken down here to its base level here) that would be considered out of line by a significant portion of the world population.
>I haven't seen any good arguments in favor of purchasing a diamond ring
As a gift
>which don't seem to dismiss and devalue the agency and right to an opinion of the purchaser.
when buying a gift for someone it is probably good to consider and value the agency and right to an opinion of the receiver.
Not saying you are forced to buy a diamond, I don't have, but that is partially because my wife does not have strong opinions on that subject either way.
> when buying a gift for someone it is probably good to consider and value the agency and right to an opinion of the receiver.
Which was obviously considered in the situation. But buying any gift of course is not a 50:50 affair. One person is spending all the money. By principle I think that person should have more finality in the decision than the person only receiving the gift.
Even then, I'd be very careful to deliver the message in the most amenable way possible.
No one is immune from trying to fit into a group, by valuing things that the group values.
You can tell your self that your Audi is objectively the best car for you, or that Mac is required to do your job most effectively.
For anyone who thinks they are totally immune, go and spend a week with an Amazonian tribe, and try to spot how many cultural differences there are between you, and then those differences are just you fitting in with your fellow tribe at home.
The best you can say is that there's a healthy balance between fitting into your pack and being subsumed by it. I don't think one diamond makes that case though. What is the difference in principle between that an someone spending years of their time making a hobby os or spending money and time making a computer from valves. Both things that 'our pack' would tend to view favourably.
A man that relies on rational thought should avoid marriage; the cons absolutely outweigh any advantage.
Similarly, you can love w/o sabotaging the relationship by marrying, giving the other party a red button and a strong incentive to press it, effectively pushing the relationship out of balance.
Statistically, they will. And statistically, you'll be screwed.
No assuming. Refer to data on Divorce Court rulings on who gets screwed.
Spoiler: It is men, as well as the children if any.
Hard data shows what the odds are like for children who grow up in broken families.
But Love is also not tied to marriage, as registered outcomes show.
It destroys families.
Well-known in the United States.
>By whom?
By anybody not willfully ignorant on marriage and its recorded outcomes.
It would have to be willfully ignorant because, if living in the states, not noticing how much it is happening all around oneself would be very unlikely.
It is, and continues to be, that the extremely unbalanced (against the man) outcome of divorce creates a massive power unbalance in the relationship. And that's the incentive.
As the almost-guaranteed to be greatly benefited party, pressing the button is, rationally, a much better option than trying to resolve any issues in the relationship.
A relationship w/o marriage lacks this perverse incentive.
I will pass on giving Her a diamond and a government-endorsed knife to stab me with. We are supposed to be equal and this shit is ridiculous.
Note I am ending my participation on this discussion here, on my end, as it has started to go in circles, some heat is sensed, and I can tell it will not be productive to go any further.
What we actually know is how marriage ends. Right now, it is already divorce, for almost every marriage.
When divorce happens, courts rule in favor of the woman, most of the time. As a man, it is irrational to marry.
When there's children, it is well demonstrated to result in very bad odds for the healthy development of these children.
As a parent, or intend-to-be parent, it isn't just irrational, but deeply irresponsible as it involves the children's well-being and future.
Marriage is insufficient to save a relationship which wasn't healthy in the first place, though.
Marriage is a concept humanity made up, and in another era might have made sense.
Exactly. Two parent household.
Once divorce happens (which will, statistically), it'll be a monoparental or otherwise unstable household.
And the children will, too, suffer. All because of someone's irresponsible (done against hard data) decision to marry.
It SHOULD be easier to make an industry of fairly-sourced tech than it is to make an industry of fairly sourced minerals.
But the tech industry makes far far more off of their slave labor than any mining industry, and the average person is far more likely to ignore the guilt of a device they need to use daily than a rock they wear occasionally.
And anyway, one of my values is affording grace for people who I see as flawed in some way. I'm certainly quite flawed myself.
It's about the sacrifice, and what that represents. It's about the tradition.
I would do (just about) anything for my wife, up to and including working arbitrarily hard for an arbitrary rock that she arbitrarily thinks is meaningful and awesome. I don't care about any of those details, and neither should any partner. You should be caring about what she wants.
If your partner wanted a diamond for all those other reasons, and you explained they aren't those things, then your partner wouldn't want a diamond anymore. That's not the case in this hypothetical example.
As the commenter upstream said, be aware of what you are buying, do your research and be knowledgeable, but for God sakes get her what she wants!
Diamond wedding rings have only been en vogue since De Beers' 1946 marketing campaign. It's a garish facet of soulless modernity masquerading as classical. Even the notion of pampering one's wife is a way of maintaining the patriarchal division of labor by keeping women in a dependent role.
In a world where money talks, insisting that men afford diamonds while women only receive them is tantamount to disenfranchisement and an abridgement of women's free expression. Are we equal partners, or is she your domestic servant? Are you the gatekeeper of her wealth and, therefore, speech and agency?
What a man buying a diamond ring "represents" is his agreement to financially provide, while the woman’s acceptance of the ring "represents" her agreement not to pursue financial independence.
Ultimately it's about tradition. I wear the ring my father (a master jeweler) made for my grandfather who wore it as his favorite ring for most of his life before passing it on to me when he passed. My wife's ring was hand made by my father, with a diamond which sat in his safe for years prior waiting for me.
It's not about the things. It's about the people.
In your rush to make these little trinkets spin a whole tale about broader humanity, you're missing the humanity right in front of you.
I won't begrudge anyone their personal family heirlooms. I completely understand your perspective, because it's a nice story.
That being said, you've shifted the goalposts with your anecdata. Familial inheritance is an exception which preuves the rule. And, furthermore, jewelry being your family business, I suspect you've a misunderstanding essential to your paycheck. My words are pearls before oysters.
You may yet understand the harm of patriarchal heteronormativity (heck, The Feminine Mystique came out in 1963, and the Cult of Domesticity is far from abolished) but probably the subject of engagement rings is not the radicalizing grain of sand for you.
I don't currently have a partner, no, but I inherited these views from many years of lovers, partners, and friends. As a straight, white man raised in a Christian nation, I held the familiar, patriarchal views on marriage and gender roles without question until I started dating queer women in college (and almost exclusively thereafter).
I think that "how they feel about it" is they would prefer to live in a world with men who are familiar with—and reluctant to participate in—patriarchal dynamics. These women have been hurt by men who mistake domination for romance, and furthermore believe this mistake to be commonplace. I can't say what they "feel" about my precise thoughts here, because I'm extrapolating from a lot of data over many years: conversations, books, research, statistics, workplace and social experiences, etc.
I think it's safe to say, though, that I cultivated a feminist viewpoint in part because the women in my milieu wouldn't have otherwise felt safe around me. This is a perspective that I took in an attempt to empathize with women who explicitly told me they were both weary and wary of men who don't take this perspective.
So unless I've made a terrific mistake and fundamentally misunderstood dozens upon dozens of women and feminists, I think they feel safe, relieved, and reassured. That's all I'm trying to be, by the way: safe, and not harmful in the ways I've seen people hurt.
...and I think engagement rings cement relationships that facilitate abuse. I doubt you spend much time interrogating the sources and prevalence of abuse, but little matters more to me.
You are allowing your beliefs to cause you to throw stones at others.
In this interaction, you are the abuser, to me, to my wife, to the others you have insulted and hurt with your statement.
One woman's diamond is another engineer's MacBook.
What a romantic! I recommend not apprising your fiance of anything, but working to understand them and make your engagement as joyful and loving as possible.
> I made it clear though that if I got this, she is not getting a new one for a long time (she has a tendency to want to rent / sample / change things up).
Is she 12 years old? Is it legal to marry someone that age? :) I hope she said, 'oh, yes dear, whatever you say', and went out and bought another the next day.
But I'm guessing you didn't say actually that to your spouse. I hope you said something like, 'I'm a bit worried about our budget for such things'. Unless it was for your engagement, and then I hope you didn't say a thing.
> Guys, buying diamonds, can complain all day about what a rip off it is (it is).
People buy similarly useless crap all the time, like cars that are more expensive than they need. Why is her preference any less legitimate, why does it need any more excuse, than any other? The only argument I see is, it's not your preference.
A purchase that is solely ceremonial and build on outdated cultural mores does merit a rational discussion about expenses and alternatives. To entertain the notion that such things shouldn't even be discussed because engagements are "oh so special" is silly. Cultural shaming shouldn't keep people from having reasonable discussions, especially when it's a purely ceremonial, psychological purchase, rather than something practical both partners could get value out of.
You're asking the wrong questions and giving the wrong answers to them.
Wrong questions: Those things don't matter in a serious, mature relationship, or are a low priority. The question is, what does your partner think? If it's important to them, then it's important. QED. That's because you care about your partner infinitely more and everything else is bullshit.
Wrong answers: If it's not important to your partner, then you discuss it. But you're still wrong: The correct answer is not to bother with the discussion, but to make sure your partner feels listened to, respected, and supported. Make sure you feel that way too, or your relationship will eventually bomb.
More wrong answers: If all of the above is done, and there's still room to discuss it, go for it. But you are still wrong: My impression is that you and the GGP seem to think that your opinions (and the grand HN consensus) are truths. Your opinion is just one limited take on reality.; your partner will have their own take, and, crucially: it's completely independent of you and your judgment; you have no business evaluating it; you just accept it. You listen, be curious about their take - give them space and time, because when you cut people off with your opinion, you actually never hear theirs (a widespread mistake of the arrogant, trapping them in ignorance). You take it in, challenge your own ideas. Then, finally, you are right to express yourself.
Yeah right! Things like diamonds are not about having shiny things, they are about getting shiny things.
Sounds like me talking about my toddler and his Legos
If the fact it's been on someone's finger before bothers her more than the potential conflict, slave labour, manipulation and underhanded trading, then I don't think a little white lie is a bad thing. Spend the money on something else
Point is... marketing rules the world, programming just supports it.
Edit: To be fair, I showed her the other options and she likes the ring I got her on sale more than all the other options that were available. And she was very happy that the rest of the money was spent on us.
https://www.pricescope.com/diamond-prices/diamond-prices-cha...
That (crappy) $4.6k diamond would be from $3.3k on now :
https://www.bluenile.com/diamond-search/?CaratFrom=0.9&Carat...
So that's a -28%, and assuming no change between 2006 and 2008, this does seem to fit the recent drop in 0.5 to 1 carat prices seen on the chart ? (Note that all of the drops happened since early 2022.)
Meanwhile, the lab grown equivalent is around $1.6 k :
https://www.bluenile.com/diamond-search/?CaratFrom=0.95&Cara...
(Where did you get the $550 figure from ?)
----
More interestingly, looking at diamonds that aren't crap (why would you settle for that when it's their optical properties that you are after ?), you have in the same size of 6.5 mm :
From $3.5k-3.9k for natural ones :
https://www.whiteflash.com/loose-diamonds/round-cut?carat=0....
(Clarity doesn't seem to matter that much, because it has not much effect as long as it can't be seen to the naked eye, which in these except the worst one it probably won't be ? https://beyond4cs.com/clarity/ )
From $1.3k for the lab-grown ones :
https://www.whiteflash.com/loose-diamonds/lab-created-diamon...
All the sellers I have seen so far but White Flash seem to at best have a tiny, monocolor «Hearts & Diamonds» logo - which makes it hard to judge for yourself. And at this point the prices are low enough that it doesn't seem to make sense to settle for less if your goal is something like an engagement ring.
I don't know, maybe I am exaggerating the importance of this - (and maybe moissanite or even cubic zirconium would actually make for even better optical properties) - but it does seem like that diamond buyers are overwhelmingly getting taken advantage of : https://beyond4cs.com/truth-about-gia-triple-excellent-diamo...
I was interested enough from this article that I was willing to try to find out by myself (including comparing with similar crystals) - but annoyingly White Flash is US based and doesn't export to my country.
Turns out all those warm fuzzies are generally cancelled out by the likelihood that our emerald is as bloody as any diamond. The story of emerald trafficking in Colombia is dark.
Rather, I suspect they slaved away in the mines so that they wouldn't be whipped and have their hands cut off.
(I'd never question your own choice to not buy it on those grounds, but proselytizing it seems to imply there are some stakes here that make it worth encouraging "everybody" to take up the same cause, and I just don't see how it matters.)
In areas where value is more tradition than intrinsic (ie rhino horns, whalebone) it’s probably effective, but at a certain point it’s navel gazing.
Likely De Beers did what cartels do and threw their lawyers to take it down?
diamondssuck should instead link to https://web.archive.org/web/20130522104756/http://www.theatl... which is a working link.
The long article is truly worth a read.
> According to industry estimates, the average one-carat flawless diamond had fallen in value by 50 percent since January of 1980. In March of 1980, for example, the benchmark value for such a diamond was $63,000; in September of 1981, it was only $23,000.
> Diamond: Via Blue Nile: 1.00-Carat Round, Very Good-cut, I-color, and VS1-clarity diamond comes accompanied by a diamond grading report from the GIA. Price: $4,565
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38252743
So, converting to today's dollars, that's :
1980 : $235.3k/1ct
1981 : $ 77.9k/1ct
2006 : $ 7.0k/1ct
2023 : $ 3.5k/1ct (and 1.3k/1ct for lab-grown)
Also, why the HELL would investors think that's a store of value, like here ?!?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37508058
I guess it's more «investors» + speculators instead, which only looked at recent values ??
Why would you burn more resources to replace an existing diamond?
Fortunately, my wife agreed wholeheartedly and we used the obligate ceremony to invite our two favorite people and leveraged the "it's our wedding" card to force them away from their jobs so we could eat Chinese food and play board games with them.
Is there anything more to it than social jockeying and prestige?
Shout out to Friendly Diamonds for a recent purchase. My spouse knocked the center stone out of her wedding ring. Ordered a much larger, much (much much much) higher quality in terms of cut color and clarity, and WAY cheaper lab diamond from them.
However, being in the market myself, I do think for a nice setting and stone you will pay $500-$1,500 for them if looking or certain cuts (kite cut as an example), sets, or styles.
Our friends and family were obsessed and not six months later I got a text from a now engaged friend who wanted to know how we found them. He also opted for a green sapphire because it matched her eyes.
Non-diamond rings sell themselves, someone (and it can be you) just needs to break the seal.
Tell you what, I can set up a website that sells moissanite for 10x their retail price if you like. Give me a day to set up a Square account and you can buy from me.
Signalling conformity with social norms is also important to some people.
(Going on a tangent: compare Bitcoin's proof-of-work, which also has utility. Of course, that doesn't mean diamonds nor proof-of-work are the best bang-for-buck. For the latter, you can use proof-of-stake or avoid cryptocurrencies altogether. For the former, there are plenty of other social arrangements that avoid diamond rings.)
In India they give gold jewelry, that makes a lot of sense. Their cultural reasoning about it is very different (it's a financial investment that ties families together) but the act is better IMO.
I think that's a bridge too far.
There's many clear reasons why people want a diamond, and even an angle like "I want to follow society's expectations" is to me far from being irrational when you're prepping yourself to build a whole life with someone else.
A couple can discuss these matters and come up with alternative paths, people are referencing other materials and I'd include not buying anything fancy and save up for the first payment of their home for instance. But brides requesting a diamond is usually far from lacking rationale.