fogw on July 18, 2007 at 11:31 AM

Hey, diamonds are the rarest of gems but every woman on this planet has one.

Actually, no, they’re not particularly rare. The traffic in them has just been very well controlled by a single business group, de Beers, for the last century. Who have also done a terrific selling job on everyone else. (Remember “A Diamond is Forever”?)

In fact, several other gemstones are both less common and more valuable carat per carat than diamonds; rubies and emeralds, to name only two examples. Diamonds are a classic example of how an artificial demand can be created and then exploited for monetary and/or political gain, simply by (a) controlling supply and (b) using this control plus artful P. R. to create a carefully-crafted illusion of scarcity or threat related to the resource in question.

For a good non-fiction treatment of this subject, look up the book The Diamond Smugglers by Ian Fleming. Much of the research Fleming did for that book he re-used in writing his later James Bond novel, Diamonds Are Forever, where he got a bit trenchant on the subject of the “real value” of diamonds. Or, if you prefer a more modern fictional treatment of the same subject, read Shock Wave, one of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels. Again, the storyline is fiction, but the statistics Cussler cites about diamond “scarcity” and the history of de Beers he gives are the real thing.

which makes me wonder just what facts exist about the “scarcity” of some types of wildlife- or the actual amount, or cause, or whatever, of global warming- that AlGore From The Planet Eco and his cronies would prefer we didn’t know, either.

cheers

eon

eon on July 18, 2007 at 12:53 PM