创业与商业blog.priceonomics.com
钻石是骗局
Diamonds Are Bullshit
2013 — 2015，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这篇 Priceonomics 文章梳理钻石如何被 De Beers 通过供应控制和广告营销塑造成求婚必需品，并质疑其作为投资与价值象征的合理性。文中讨论垄断、定价和消费心理；评论区补充了人造钻石、血钻伦理和奢侈品信号价值等角度。
为什么经久不衰：它把钻石神话拆成垄断、营销和消费惯性，今天用来理解品牌溢价与奢侈品仍很锋利。
HN 评论精选
人造钻石品质可超天然，但GE因De Beers打压风险放弃了消费市场。
我认识的人90年代在GE参与工业钻石生产，听过不少趣事。人造钻石比开采钻石更强韧（缺陷更少），所以工业钻石多为人造，用于切割金属等硬材料。GE研发时也考虑过做珠宝级钻石，能生产在4C上优于天然钻石的产品，还能在制造中加不同气体做出各种颜色。成本仍不低，但不会到De Beers当时的定价水平。GE后来评估是否真要进入消费级钻石市场，律师和高管认为不值得惹麻烦，因为De Beers曾发起抹黑人造钻石的小 campaign，GE真进入只会更糟，于是终止了项目。
kyrra查看英文原文
(person I know) worked for GE (General Electric) on their industrial diamond production process back in the 90's, and I got to hear lots of fun stories from this. Diamonds that are man-made[1] are stronger (fewer imperfections) than those that are mined from the earth. Because of this, industrial diamonds tend to be man-made. (for reference, industrial diamonds when cutting hard materials, such as metals). While working on these diamonds, GE decided to start investigating making consumer level diamonds that could be sold for jewelry. They were able to produce diamonds that would have excelled when compared to natural diamonds (when it comes to the 4 Cs). One of the fun things was they could add various gases to the manufacturing process to create diamonds of various colors. There is still a decent cost associated with producing diamonds this way, so they probably would have still been expensive, but not at the levels that De Beers was charging at the time. At this point GE started to look into what would happen if they would have actually gone down this line, selling consumer-level diamonds. After a little investigation, the GE lawyers and upper-management decided to kill off the idea as it would not have been worth the hassle. De Beers started a small campaign that was discrediting man-made diamonds, and it would have gotten a lot worse if GE even tried to enter the market. GE decided it was not worth the hassle, and killed the consumer-level diamond project. De Beers has created an artificial market and they are doing what they can to prevent anyone else from entering their market. Most companies don't want to deal going up against them, so they just leave De Beers to run around gouging consumers. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond#High_pressure.2C_high_temperature
推荐大西洋经典长文作为延伸阅读。
虽然文章内已有链接，但《你试过卖出一颗钻石吗》非常值得一读，它在HN被讨论过很多次。
steveklabnik查看英文原文
It's linked within the article, but it's worth pointing out that "Have you ever tried to sell a diamond"[1] is very much worth your time, and has been discussed here many times. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4535611 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1405698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1110283 1: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/02/have-you-ever-tried-to-sell-a-diamond/304575/?single_page=true
钻石传统背后有战争和死亡的外部成本，伦理上不一致。
评论里有人列出女性评估男性的三个理由：供养能力、愿意放弃其他机会、向同伴展示社会地位（信号）。我同意这些逻辑，但完全不同意遗漏了重要一点：你资助了残暴战争和独裁政权，这是强负外部性。看到钻石时，不应只看到闪亮石头，而应看到一部分人类灵魂，一个为这块无价值石头白白死去的人的一小部分。如果社会惯例要求用刀从活人身上割下一磅肉，你会为传统坚持吗？如果社会惯例要求钻石，而你很清楚它导致战争、死亡和苦难，为什么还坚持？这不合逻辑也不一致。
guylhem查看英文原文
I see people talking about various things like the (1) (2) (3) arguments for a women to evaluate a man : (1) is the ability to provide; 2) is the willingness to forgo other things (opportunity costs to talk economics) (3) "is demonstrating to the woman's peers her husband's social standing." (signalling) Raynier posted this deep down in a reply which might be lost to you if you don't read all the comments. It would be a shame to miss it. Read it, along with the reasoning where he says such criterias would be perfectly valid for his own daughter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5404423 It seems perfectly valid, yet I could not disagree more. We are forgetting a important (4) : you fund atrocious wars and dictatorships. That's a strong negative externality. When you see a diamonds, instead of seeing a shiny rock, you should see part of a human soul instead, a fraction of a person who died in vain for this worthless piece of rock you want for your wives or daughters to "sustain the tradition". If social convention required 1 pound of flesh taken by the knife on a living human, would you insist on it, for the sake of the tradition? (I fear many would - after all, it matches the 1,2,3 requirements) If social convention requires a diamond, which you know very well will cause war, death and misery, and if you did not say yes to the previous question, why are you insisting on it? It strikes me as illogical, inconsistent. Either you believe that human life is more important than tradition, or you don't. I can understand diverging opinions, I can hardly understand inconsistency in a system of belief, so I'm very sad to see intelligent replies advocating this 1,2,3 argument while missing the huge downside #4 is. Maybe someday the sale of things containing "natural diamonds" will be banned - just like the sale of things containing bald eagles feathers. IHMO, it should: as much as I love the market and freedom, sometimes externalities are just too big to be ignored - especially when there is also a monopolist in action, and perfect substitutes like man made diamonds.
垄断消失后高价仍靠非理性信号消费，钻石并不比其它奢侈品更特殊。
文章的妙处在倒数第二段：今天De Beers对供应链的控制已没那么强，但价格仍在涨，因为近期没发现新矿藏，而印度和中国的需求在增加。目前公司不必垄断供应链，因为“钻石是男人人生价值的代理”这个谎言已经感染了世界。所以垄断没了，价格因固定供应面对需求上升而涨，但钻石仍是bullshit，因为其价值建立在消费者非理性上。我不想戳破他，但一半消费经济都建立在非理性上（一半硅谷就建立在向消费者广告这种非理性上）。几乎所有奢侈品都是因信号原因购买的；为特定净度或颜色多付钱，并不比买顶配宝马更非理性，尽管交通下你永远开不到60。
rayiner查看英文原文
The punchline is the second to last paragraph: > Today, De Beers hold on the industry supply chain is less strong. And yet, price continue to rise as new deposits haven’t been found recently and demand for diamonds is increasing in India and China. For now, it’s less necessary that the company monopolize the supply chain because its lie that a diamond is a proxy for a man’s worth in life has infected the rest of the world. So the monopoly is gone, prices are rising because of fixed supply in the face of increasing demand, but diamonds are still bullshit because their value is based on a consumer irrationality. I hate to break it to the guy, but half of the consumer economy is built on irrationality (and half of silicon valley is built on advertising that irrationality to consumers). Pretty much every luxury good is purchased for signaling reasons. Paying more for a diamond with a particular clarity grade or color isn't any less irrational than paying more for a top-end BMW, even though you'll never take it over 60 because of all the traffic.
历次讨论
同类还值得读
微软已死（2007）
Microsoft is Dead (2007)
Paul Graham 2007 年的一篇短文，判断微软在互联网与创业竞争中已不再令人畏惧、失去影响力——所谓“死”并非字面倒闭。
创业与商业上首页 8 次 · 2007–2025paulgraham.comH&R Block 与 Intuit 游说反对简化报税（2017）
H&R Block and Intuit Lobbying Against Simpler Tax Filing (2017)
2017年ProPublica调查报道梳理了H&R Block和Intuit如何通过游说反对更简单的美国报税方式，尤其是政府预填税表和免费申报等改革。
创业与商业上首页 5 次 · 2017–2022propublica.org你本不该有老板
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss (2008)
Paul Graham 2008 年的经典文章，论证人类在演化中习惯于小团体协作，而大公司的层级结构和老板制度是人为产物，对程序员尤其有害——因为编程的本质是创造新事物，而大公司…
创业与商业上首页 5 次 · 2008–2020paulgraham.com为什么要在经济糟糕时创业
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
Paul Graham 的经典短文，论证经济衰退并不是创业的障碍：真正决定成败的是创始人和产品，而非宏观环境；衰退期反而竞争更少、人才更易招、成本更低。
创业与商业上首页 5 次 · 2008–2022paulgraham.com做那些不可规模化的事
Do Things that Don't Scale
Paul Graham 2013 年的经典创业文章《Do Things that Don't Scale》。
创业与商业上首页 4 次 · 2013–2025paulgraham.com编辑精选