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You’d think that was easy… Red Roses, Diamond Ring, ‘The Kneeling’…

Uh uh… Not gonna get off that easy… Someone forwarded me this page… Which categorically shows how uncool getting a diamond ring is… Made me want to throw a chair at the “I am your destiny” ad…

Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One. (2/14/02)
By Liz Stanton, CPE Staff Economist

1. You’ve Been Psychologically Conditioned To Want a Diamond
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.

2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
The De Beers cartel has systematically held diamond prices at levels far greater than their abundance would generate under anything even remotely resembling perfect competition. All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.

3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value
Any diamond that you buy or receive will indeed be yours forever: De Beers’ advertising deliberately brain-washed women not to sell; the steady price is a tool to prevent speculation in diamonds; and no dealer will buy a diamond from you. You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original “value.”

4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.

5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.

6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People’s Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.

7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world’s diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.

9. Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.

10. Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 million small arms in the world today which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.

I’m not one to panic after reading such stuff. I can be really skeptical when I need to be and this article set the alarms off almost immediately. It’s the way the statements are phrased. Very accusatory, very sweeping.

Soph asked me if it was true… And I said it probably is. But even so, it couldn’t be greater a tragedy than the many other scandals that the consumerist economy has churned out over the years… Like the Nike Sweatshops for instance…

Anyway, I decided to do a quick background check on the author. She’s from CPE, the Centre for Popular Economics, “a non-profit organization that teaches economic literacy to activists for progressive social change. CPE creates and communicates economic theories that challenge systems of oppression based on class, race, gender and nation.” (Got it from their website)

Non profit organizations are well known for digging up obscure facts and blowing them up for their causes. The facts may or may not be proven accurate. I’m not here to discredit them. Most of them do a lot of commendable work. All I’m saying is, they all have their own agendas, and the facts will be biased to some extent.

On the other hand, there must be a ring of truth to it. (Pun fully intended) A lot of factories in the third world countries employ child labour because they are cheaper than adults. And the working conditions leave much to be desired. The garment factories in Bangladesh were always closed to outsiders, possibly to hide the fact that they illegally employ children. The situation with the diamond industry would not differ that much.

Conclusion:

Diamonds may not be such a good thing to buy… Even for a proposal… There’s too much dirt hidden behind all that shine and radiance… One can always get other equally effective alternatives like, the dream car, the expresso machine, the camera equipment, etc etc.

Although, I’m a real sucker for good advertising… It can’t hurt to just own 1 diamond ring right??

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 21st, 2006 at 12:01 am and is filed under Musings, Websites. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.