[dirtdobber]

> "This diamond caused untold human suffering and exploitation to acquire."

Dude, the copper in your phone required untold human suffering and exploitation to acquire.

You want to profess some grand moral judgement about purchasing mined minerals, but I guarantee all of that moral judgment goes out the door when it comes to products that you can afford and want to buy.

[viridian]

Are you arguing for a nihilistic worldview where one should abstain from caring about suffering and exploitation, or just calling OP a probable hypocrite? If the latter, what position do you take that isn't hypocritical?

[dirtdobber]

It's pretty clear, no?

Are you asking me for a non-hypocritical position on the diamond market? My position is simply that natural diamonds are a luxury item. Claiming that there's suffering involved in obtaining natural diamonds and therefore you should only purchase synthetic (non-luxury) diamonds, is a view that is inconsistent with the way most people live. Otherwise, we'd all stop buying clothes, shoes, cell phones, coffee, etc. Essentially every product you use, unless you take extreme care, involves human trafficking at some point in the supply chain.

[viridian]

Thanks for clarifying. I think this is a degenerate, self-defeating way to view your relationship to the purchases you make.

By stripping away any agency you may have and shifting both blame and responsibility onto the market, government, or other amoral greater power, you shrink yourself. You are capable of agency, even if some acts are harder than others.

In between the absolute poles of absolute moral asceticism and nihilistic indifference to suffering, is a massive spectrum. On that spectrum, blood diamonds are a very, very low hanging fruit for anyone seeking to demonstrate even the smallest shred of moral agency.

A few reasons this is so easy:

1) An alternative product exists, and is cheaper than the one produced by forced labor. You save money by not paying extra for suffering.

2) The purchase is infrequent. Unlike food or clothing, you aren't constantly required to buy more of it and thus have to research suppliers and production practices over and over.

3) The quality of the alternative is as high or higher. Unlike with any number of technology products where you are cajoled by unique feature sets and a higher level of polish that comes part and parcel with grinding through humans, lab diamonds do the main things a diamond does as well or better than the alternative. They reflect, refract, scratch, and cleave exactly as one wants them to.

[dirtdobber]

Or, get this, I can buy a natural diamond that was ethically sourced.

[hungie]

Just because we accept it in one place doesn't mean we should blanket accept it everywhere. This isn't some inductive proof of human suffering where we can just k+1 cases where people do bad things.

Whataboutism isn't a useful or helpful way to discuss an industry with unbelievable human suffering.

Start a post about copper mining if you want to discuss copper mining. We're talking diamonds here, which have a demonstrable human cost.

[dirtdobber]

> Whataboutism isn't a useful or helpful way to discuss an industry with unbelievable human suffering.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. My point was not that there's not human suffering in the diamond industry, nor that it isn't bad. My point is that you, a person that cannot afford expensive natural diamonds (speaking statistically here, I don't know you personally), probably should not cast moral judgments on others that can and do purchase expensive natural diamonds. This is due to the fact that you, a person that can afford a cell phone, chooses to purchase a cell phone, despite that industry experiencing similar levels of human suffering. Therefore, I am forced to believe that in the counterfactual world where you can afford expensive diamonds, you would buy them.

[plokiju]

In the case of diamonds, you have the choice of buying the exact same product with human suffering involved, or without. If there were a lab-grown iPhone on the market, of course I would choose it

[dirtdobber]

https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5

Or, is some level of human suffering ok for you to have the luxury of using an iPhone?

[hungie]

I make approximately 750k/year. I can afford diamonds. I choose not to buy them because they are a symbol of accepting human suffering for my luxury.