yadda yadda .i am soo over all that diamond bashing these articels are around as long as diamonds itself so it seems. and still prices going strong. and yes it is marketing but so is everything else.
I can't say I have seen anything here that I would call "bashing." People with an interest do have the option of looking into the provenance of any product they buy, and I have discussed marketing, here and elsewhere, but frankly, the number of people who are going to do a lot of looking into the journey any product makes from raw material to store shelf is very small, it is not really the kind of unpleasantness that most consumers are going to want to know about.
As for the marketing aspect, there is another thread, I think it is in the handbag forum, that discusses the interesting practice of significantly raising prices as a marketing technique, and there you will see many responses from people acknowledging that it is a marketing technique, but they do not plan to alter their purchasing habits because of it.
And if I didn't say it in this thread, I'm sure I have in others, that in my opinion, the diamond industry has been overcautious with regard to a few newspaper articles and a movie that received some hefty marketing bucks from the studio. The buying habits of the vast majority of consumers of high dollar products are not, in my opinion, going to be impacted by things like that. An overwhelming percentage of these consumers are motivated by perceived status in owning a particular product, not the plight of the less fortunate. And has been discussed, there are even marketing strategies in place to address the concerns of the few who are - and without negatively impacting resource extraction, production or sales. This particular area of business, as noted, has been riding high for decades thanks to a brilliant marketing coup that taps into millennia-old traditions, keeping ancient concepts alive and thriving even in the most ostensibly modern societies. The young ladies of these cultures want to command a high bride-price every bit much as the herdsman's daughter of old - and her great-great granddaughter in the isolated mountain village.
Thus as you point out, prices are still quite strong, and as is the case with the price-raising strategies employed in the handbag and other industries, the jewelry companies can expect a steady increase in profits!
I take the .25 real diamond. I wouldn't want a CZ ring at all, to each his own. Either way you can upgrade later, but I don't like CZ. Poor CZ has a bad stigma attached to it (cheap, fake, etc.) as well, lol....
