Oh Look, It's Dymondine

I've actually heard it said that it's possible to make artificial diamonds more economically than finding them loose. True? Not true? "Will be true in a few years"? I don't know. But they were talking about how diamond folks were marking stones as "known to be mined" with tiny imprints.

From my perspective, "it's a shiny rock!" makes me think "You mean this shiny rock was made using industrial processes? *COOL*! Before, people had to do a lot of work, often in slave-conditions! This is *far* more valuable to me, knowing that no one was enslaved to bring it to me."

Of course, the flip side of that is, if diamond mining is a valuable industry, then it is *possible* for a country to lift its citizenry out of poverty by selling diamonds. It doesn't happen - but if diamond mining becomes pointless because artificial is actually better, that's another industry where a country can't get its citizens out of poverty. Agriculture is already severely damaged - it used to be 30% of the US did some labor on farms/food production. Now I think it's like 3%. Which means 27% of the population is free to do other stuff, but what if that "other stuff" starts seeing similar compression? We're at a precipice, where capitalism is about to become far more dangerous.

(Um. Capitalism, in the sense of "capital should earn the majority of money" - not in the sense of "private property, free market where sensible". That can go from capitalist to pretty-damn-socialist.)