Thanks! I’m drawing off my own experiences in Cameroon, where people would marvel over my most mundane artifacts- cheap plastic beads, glossy magazine ads, and bits of foil. I lived in an area that still wasn’t overrun with consumer goods- decorative gourds were the height of home decoration- and so these things really were remarkable. I’d occasionally find bits of my garbage- empty shampoo bottles and the like- lovingly displayed in my neighbor’s china cabinets as objects of beauty. It was enough to give me a taste of what it must have been like in the past.
If the dollar collapses, gold ain’t gonna be worth nothing anyway. Ammo and guns will be the currency.
Well, if you selectively edit my post sure.:rolleyes: But I compared Diamonds not to cat turds but to CZ, which is every bit as pretty but 1/1000th the price.
DeBeers holds around 50% of the gem diamonds , and thus is the Big Dog. The other diamond sellers just go along with whatever DeBeers wants.
wiki" Gem diamonds
From 2001 onwards several lawsuits were filed against De Beers in US State and Federal courts. These alleged that De Beers unlawfully monopolized the supply of diamonds and conspired to fix, raise and control diamond prices. Additionally there were allegations of misleading advertising. Whilst De Beers denied all allegations that it violated the law, in November 2005, De Beers announced that an agreement had been reached to settle civil class action suits filed against the company in the United States, and in March 2006, three other civil class action suits were added to the November agreement. In April 2008, De Beers confirmed that Judge Chesler of the US Federal District Court in New Jersey had entered an order approving the Settlement, resulting in a settlement arrangement totaling $295 million USD. De Beers does not admit liability. As part of the settlement, persons who purchased gem diamonds from January 1, 1994 to March 31, 2006 may be eligible for compensation.[36]
[edit]Industrial diamonds
In 2004 De Beers pleaded guilty and paid a $10 million fine to the United States Department of Justice to settle a 1994 charge that De Beers had colluded with General Electric to fix the price of industrial diamonds.[37][38]"
Here’s a 2008 article:
http://college.cengage.com/economics/taylor/complete/student/exercise/taylor/a10_1.htm
*The diamond cartel now operated by De Beers was set up by the South African mining magnate, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, in 1934. It is now the vehicle through which over 80% of world sales of rough diamonds is administered and marketed. In this paper, Muireann Kelliher explores how one company has come to dominate an industry… Assuaging this threat will require all the political and diplomatic clout of the corporation. Yet, there is a degree of consensus within the industry that centralised selling and buffer stock management are in its collective and long-term interest. The diamond is the strongest material known and it is therefore fitting that the diamond cartel has been so resilient slightly ironic that the diamond cartel is not only extremely strong but also extremely old. Only time will tell whether De Beers will continue to control this market and whether diamonds really are forever.
*
"*Bergenstock is an expert on marketing in the diamond industry. As a Ph.D. candidate in economics and marketing at Lehigh University, she chose the topic of the De Beers diamond for her dissertation. In particular, Bergenstock focused on how De Beers, a large South African corporation which for decades has exerted a virtual monopoly on the world’s diamond trade, skillfully created the now widely held idea that a small piece of rock is an expression of affection whose purchase merits the expenditure of significant sums of money.
Bergenstock has incorporated her findings into a first-year seminar at the College, which she entitled, “De Beers and Diamonds: Are They Forever?”
…
The male students in particular came away from the course understanding that diamonds, on a practical level, are completely overpriced.
The price of diamonds have increased as the result of years of brilliant marketing and business tactics by De Beers, which equates love with diamonds. Scott Sutton '06 noted, “We’re getting ripped off.”
*
Taking it from a different angle, why do women like gold and diamonds?
Diamonds only became synonymous with “Engagement Ring” in the early 1900s, following an incredibly successful marketing campaign by DeBeers. Before then, pearl was a popular engagement stone, as it symbolized purity.
It’s been noted that substitutes for gold and diamonds exist today that are both attractive and economical. Except that those wearing certain types of jewelry don’t want something cheap: they want something expensive.
“That’s the beauty of it! It doesn’t ‘do’ anything!”
Ah, so a bunch of male college students came away from a first year course convinced they shouldn’t buy their girlfriends diamonds. Well, that settles it.
But De Beers doesn’t hold a monopoly on cubic zirconia. So why aren’t people eschewing diamonds for cubic zirconia? Like it or not, people prefer diamonds over CZ.
There’s no amount that diamonds SHOULD be worth. That is not how the world works. Diamonds, like absolutely every other thing in the world, are worth what someone is willing to pay for them. If people are willing to pay more for diamonds than cibic zirconia, diamonds are worth more. That’s how we determine value, economically speaking.
And *your *cite is so much better… oh wait.
You have to have been able to read the cites- women want diamonds as DeBeers has brainwashed them into it. More or less like Tulipomania.
How rare is it?
Can you imagine a football field? Stand on the goal line and look down to the 40 yard line. Now imagine a cube 40 yards long, 40 yards wide and 40 yards high.
That is how much gold there is in the entire world.
wiki "At the end of 2006, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 158,000 tonnes[51] and its January 2009 issue, National Geographic magazine writes: “In all of history, only 161,000 tons of gold have been mined, barely enough to fill two Olympic-size swimming pools.”[1] This can be represented by a cube with an edge length of about 20.28 meters. The value of this is very limited; at $1000 per ounce, 161,000 tons of gold would have a value of only 5.2 trillion dollars."
I estimated 40 yards figuring it would be close enough to make the point. I had a recollection that was the approximate size from about 10 years ago. But it was just my best guess. If Wikipedia says it is 20 metres (which is almost exactly 20 yards), I’m pretty sure that would be a more correct figure.
So, please let me change my post from 40 yards to 20 yards and thanks for your correction.
Interesting that a cube of 40 yards doesn’t seem much bigger than a cube of 20 yards. But it is actually 8 times bigger. My high school math finally pays off! 
You’re right that 5.2 trillion dollars isn’t much; Bush’s Iraq adventure has already burned through about one trillion. Someone with better Google-fu than I can find out what Tokyo’s Ginza district was “worth” at the height of their real estate bubble, but wasn’t it trillion(s) of dollars or so?
Gold in world and gold ever mined are of course two very different things.
The volume of the oceans and concentration of gold are well-known, so simple arithmetic can yield “tons of gold in the oceans”, yet I see a very broad range of estimates when I Google for it. My own quick unreliable calculation gives 10 million tons as a ballpark estimate, which is near the middle of the estimates shown with Google. I guess that would be 300 trillion dollars at current prices, though current prices would doubtless be undercut. 
One interesting factoid about “all gold ever mined” is that a large percentage of it was once all stored at Fort Knox, Kentucky. Again we’ll need someone with better Google-fu for details, though just now at Wikipedia I see that Fort Knox isn’t even in first place anymore, beaten out slightly by the Federal Reserve’s Manhattan vault. (Together the two now have almost 6% of gold ever mined.)
Do all women love chocolate? No. Do most American women love chocolate? Probably. Yet chocolate doesn’t enjoy worldwide popularity. Nonetheless, it seems that while all (most?) cultures have their comfort foods. In Spain, it tends to be fried. Egg drop soup is popular in China. Argentinians like breaded meat as well as sausages.
Western women didn’t have to be coaxed into expecting blood diamonds. But methinks that it’s unsurprising that they would appreciate some sort of offering by their mate, especially one that is pretty and discretely conspicuous.
That aside, far more synthetic diamonds are sold each year than real ones. 26,000 kg are mined annually, but 100,000+ kg are synthesized. Answers - The Most Trusted Place for Answering Life's Questions
See also http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/8205/8205diamonds.html
… and furthermore 80% of diamonds that are mined are used for industrial purposes.
No, they *are *pretty rare as natural minerals go, just not as rare as you’d think. Lots of gemstones are rarer, some are super-rare, like Benitoite or Tanzanite. And nowadays, of course, we can make them ourselves.
Not for long, it isn’t
That’s just not true. Objectively, scientifically not true.
That’s just subjective on your part, and certainly isn’t the societal norm. Pearl’s iridescence is much higher valued than jet, in general. Sure, there’ve been fads for jet jewellery, but that doesn’t make it the norm. Personally, I prefer jet, but I’d not call the one much prettier than the other.
I take it you’re unfamiliar with the vast amount of folklore attached to precious stones, then.
I doubt very much any of those are river-polished stones. *Especially *the latter two, but even that first is tumbled, not natural. Natural river stones look like this, if you’re lucky. And, anyway, they tend not to include softer stuff like malachite, or easily-fractured, pointy bits like that apatite (which, BTW, dissolves in any mildly-acidic water) or that rose-quartz. Which, I think I should tell you, is very rarely how you encounter crystals in situ, what with all the encrustation and associat minerals you usually have to clean off.
So congratulations - you just pointed to a bunch of man-made and man-cleaned-up stuff to argue that these things do occur* in nature*.
I don’t know what percentage of gold is used in industry, but I would not call it’s use limited. It is an easy thing to deposit at very small dimensions. It is inert once deposited. It takes very little to make a sufficiently conductive contact. Electronic devices are constantly being manufactured with gold. At least in testing, when I want to put together a device, gold is the default contact. I don’t know what goes on once these devices are eventually produced for market. They may use aluminum. I don’t think that is an option for me.
There are many other uses for gold in high tech. Layers thin enough to see through can be deposited. Nanoparticles can be made with proteins and antibodies attached to them. When you get to extremely small dimensions, the electronic and optical properties start to do wonky things. I even expect that it’s chemistry will start to play a role in catalytic oxidation.
I don’t know how big a percentage of the industry, that these applications take up is. In most cases, a very small amount of gold goes a really long way. I still would not call it’s application in industry limited. In fact, I would call it quite prevalent.
You’ve managed to answer your own question.
Bolding in quote is mine for emphasis.
Paupers can see sunsets over the most beautiful seas and mountains in the world. Views of mountain peaks and ranges are available to many who just happen to live there. The oceans roll into beautiful surf all around the planet, with even the poorest of the poor there to see, hear and enjoy it all.
That’s the answer. Humans – APPARENTLY in great numbers – desire exclusivity. It’s a by-product of being human. This is how we tick… we trade, and climb to hire stations in life. Honestly, were humans not like this (must have gold and diamonds), I am not so sure you’d even have a chance to type out your confusion on the very computer you are using.
.
Glass was once valued like diamonds, as well as such base metals like aluminum. But once they could be mass produced, value went down.
Yes, of course, I remember when the De Beers programmers came by and brainwashed all my female relatives.
No, wait, that never happened.
And you explain, again, why all of De Beers’s competitors don’t simply destroy them by underselling them?
Again; something is worth what someone is willing to pay for it. Diamonds are worth a lot because people like them and are willing to pay a lot for them. WHY people like them is something that varies from consumer to consumer, but it’s transparently stupid to claim De Beers created all the demand for diamonds; diamonds were already extremely valuable and coveted gemstones long before De Beers existed. Not to point out the obvious, but that’s why De Beers started selling the damned things in the first place.
Unless your female relative never watch TV or read Magazines or see billboards, yes, they were brainwashed. If none of them wear or want diamonds, then it didn’t take, sure.
DeBeers controls enough of the worlds diamonds (up to 80% of the gem quality) so they can’t be undercut. If one of the other mining companies, controling maybe 1% cut their prices by half, DeBeers would laugh, and the other 99% of the market wouldn’t budge. Of course, since the other companies stand to make huge profits by have the prices of diamonds marked up many times, they have a economic incentive to play along. Actually, DeBeers was scared shitless Russia would dump it’s diamonds on the market.
Gemstones were always coveted- but as ouryL pointed out, so was glass (in fact quite a few ancient “gemstones” are glass). Diamonds were actually coveted less than others as they had little color and could not be cut- don’t get me wrong, they still had value, but Emeralds, rubies and others were valued more. The Chinese did not consider the diamond to be a gemstone, they thought it was only useful as a jade cutting tool, and that Westerners were only wearing diamonds due to superstition! Outside India, diamonds were not used much until the South African fields were discovered. (Many mentions of stones translated to diamonds such as by the Romans were much more likely corundum or spinel). There was only a small market until DeBeers created one. Wiki "The popularity of diamonds has risen since the 19th century because of increased supply, improved cutting and polishing techniques, growth in the world economy, and innovative and successful advertising campaigns."
For example:
principal surviving historic jewels=
Edward the Confessor’s sapphire,
The *ruby *which adorns the centre of the Crown of State has a rich and dramatic history.
The Imperial Crown of State also contains pearls worn as earrings by Elizabeth I,"
Now sure, the Crown jewels aslo contain some famous diamonds- all of which date to after the 1800s- although the Koh-i-Noor was a fabled Indian jewel from early days, but which needed to be recut. There’s also the Cullinan which dates from 1905.
Didn’t the crown jewels once feature bezoar stones – basically hardened hairballs from the stomach of a cow, quite pretty?