Lab-grown diamonds have helped diamond prices plunge 60%, and former monopolist De Beers is in crisis mode. One day asteroid mining will do the same for gold.

I swear at times Marx had a time machine.

Yes, if diamonds were rare I wouldn't have a diamond tipped drillbit set and several diamond saws. "Blah blah" quality ... sure ... but rare is rare.

Beltalowda

Right? Diamond is a crystal of Carbon. Its synthesis was a challenge, required high pressure, but sounde doable from the beggining.

Now, transmuting one element into other (gold)... That's atomic energy right there. A whole new level.

Asteroid might remain too expensive if it's even possible, with rocket fuel, mining equipment in space,etc

Good source of iridium, which is rare on earth

I've heard that lab grown are actually better across each measurement (clarity,shine, whatever), than natural diamonds, now.

Lab grown diamonds are much better quality than natural diamonds. So now natural diamond companies are moving to the "imperfections is what make a diamond perfect" strategy. But nothing's stopping labs from growing diamonds with imperfections if that's what the people are after.

All in all, diamonds have always been mostly a scam and it's showing more and more.

It is the blood and slavery that make natural diamonds so valuable /s

they actually made gold from lead, in the hadron collider. but it was a few particles, and very unstable, still gold!

I totally get where you're coming from—on the surface, it does seem absurd that so much effort, money, and even space tech is being directed toward chasing a shiny yellow metal that, in practical terms, doesn’t do much for human survival. It can’t feed us, shelter us, or cure disease. And yet, we’ve built entire economies and mythologies around it. But the strange part is, this isn’t unique to gold. It’s part of a much deeper pattern in human economic systems, especially in capitalism, where markets need some way to store and measure value—and that almost always leads societies to latch onto something rare, durable, and symbolic, whether it’s objectively useful or not.

In early societies, people used cowrie shells in the Pacific Islands, huge stone disks in Yap, salt in ancient Africa, and even tulip bulbs in the Dutch Republic. These weren’t chosen because they had immense utility, but because they were scarce, hard to replicate, and symbolically powerful. They allowed people to trade across time and space. Capitalism, being based on decentralized exchange, competition, and accumulation, basically demands a store of value that everyone can agree on—even if the object itself is more symbolic than practical. Gold just happens to check all the boxes: it’s rare, doesn’t tarnish, can be melted and divided, and most importantly, it's extremely hard to counterfeit or mass-produce without massive energy investment.

If gold didn’t exist, we’d be doing the same thing with something else. In fact, that’s basically what happened with Bitcoin. People wanted a store of value outside the control of central banks, and they turned to something even more intangible—just math and energy. It’s the same pattern: we create artificial scarcity and give it value, because we need a common reference point to coordinate vast, impersonal economies.

Now, the asteroid mining thing? Yeah, it sounds wild. But from a capitalist perspective, it actually makes sense. If gold remains valuable, then any untapped supply—even in space—is a business opportunity. The fact that this seems grotesque when we think about all the hunger and suffering here on Earth is a painful contradiction, but it’s also part of the logic of capitalism. Capital doesn't naturally flow toward moral priorities like feeding people; it flows toward returns. And unless there are incentives or systemic shifts to redirect that flow, people will keep pursuing things like asteroid gold, because that’s where the value signal points.

So yeah, it’s kind of maddening. But it's not really about gold being useful—it's about human systems needing anchors of value. And gold, for all its impracticality, happens to be an anchor that capitalism can rally around.

It's universally obtainable but not in ridiculous volumes and not without effort and once obtained it's incredibly durable. It's essentially perfect for the job.

Gold mining is fairly expensive. According to this website, gold mining currently has a operating profit margin of 30%, while the average public company has an operating margin of 27%.

This lines up relatively well with this other dataset of US companies reporting 32% gross profit margins (go to the bottom of the page).

So it seems to me that gold mining isn't really that "special" compared other commodities.

still one of humanity's less stupid ideas, even so.