(no subject)

[stellar_muddle]

Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One
Good incentives not to buy diamonds. But the question is, what percentage of these comments apply equally well to any mining industry - metal, mineral or oil? Emerald mining in South America ain't pretty and don't ask how many Chinese coal miners die each year.
Ready to start protesting yet? You should be.
Then imagine your life without metals, minerals or oil.
When you get frustrated with banging the rocks together, start thinking about actually supporting and encouraging mining initiatives which aim for decent wages and working conditions, reasonable environmental planning and management, good safety standards and realise that you are going to have to pay for that.
And remember the next time you are shrilly shrieking "Not in my backyard!!", "Not in my pristine country!", if they can't do it in your country with reasonably strict environmental, labour and health and safety law, they will toddle off to some third world backwater where they can really exploit the locals, bribe to avoid the law, fuck up the local environment and rake in a quick buck before tootling off to the next decent cheap spot on the map. But then it is no longer in your back yard and you can happily ignore it and go on oblivious, while making your token donations to deserving overseas causes in times of publicised natural disaster only.

Mind you, farming will screw the land over to a much less recoverable degree...

I did think that the Christmas present of a clean drinking water supply for an impoverished villiage somewhere, donated on our behalf, was one of the better presents out there. (Thanks Z's sister for that)

And I like recycled gold:)

Comments

[theuns.livejournal.com]

So, basically:
1. Diamonds have no intrinsic value.
2. Mining companies aren't nice.

While I agree with 1., I still have difficulty seeing how poor working conditions is fundamentally worse than no working conditions - some of the most destitute countries in the world seem to be those with nothing anybody wants. Of course, you don't hear about those, because nobody cares...

[stellar-muddle.livejournal.com]

Dunno re 1: Diamond grit is useful wrt polishing, but whether or not you equate intrinsic value with usefulness...
The working conditions are the issue - given the choice would you rather starve to death slowly or play russian roulette but get paid doing it. They might give a good payout to your widow(er) but it ain't guaranteed...
It does seem to hang on what people want and what are they willing to pay... and how many lives should be paid for someone else's distraction... and how many lives are saved/supported by someone else's distraction.
Unfortunately, niceness just isn't encouraged enough.

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Ever been up close to a victim of miners pthysis (silicosis) as they cough their lungs out? I have.

[theuns.livejournal.com]

I'm not arguing that it's bad. I'm questioning whether it's worse than the benefits of having nothing the world wants.

[theuns.livejournal.com]

Industrial diamond's a lot cheaper than mined ones if you want grit.

Question I have is whether boycotting diamonds would make the situation better.

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Artificial diamond is about four times the weight annually of mined bort industrial grade diamond, but it's usually very fine, so only useful for grit and fine abrasives. As soon as you up the size, you up the cost a lot, so mined bort diamond becomes cheaper when you need coarse industrial diamonds (for rock drill bits, etc.)

The point about boycotting diamonds is that there's currently no easy way of determining which diamonds are mined illegally and which are not, due to the difficulty of marking them or chemically tracing them, and therefore which are funnelling money to the wrong places and which are not. Given their commercial practices, and that if De Beers was in any other industry, anywhere, they'd be hammered to death by the anti-monopoly statutes of the western world, and the only reason they're not is because they're stupidly rich and powerful, I'm not sure I'd want to give the buggers any money anyway.

[basal-surge.livejournal.com]

Dunno. I'm not sure we need that whole consumer society, myself. What the world wants, and what it needs, are very, very different things. Having worked in mines in the developed world, and in the third world, I can tell you that the money it would take to make conditions tolerable for the third world miners is fairly negligible, and the safety tech required has been mostly available in the west for about forty years. However, mining companies like working places where lax and corrupt government means that even if safety and environmental statutes exist, they are not enforced.

And, of course, they're not above machinegunning the locals if that works, too.(Anglo American Gold, anyone?)