Manufactured Scarcity: Diamonds And Other Crap You're Paying Too Much For

I don't know if it's because of wedding season or what, but I've seen a lot of coverage of diamonds lately. You may remember that I have my own opinions about diamonds, and deliberately don't have a diamond engagement ring. Women who want the look of the clear, shiny rock without the guilt or expense of diamonds have had the options of cubic zirconia or moissanites for years. But did you know there are lab-grown diamonds out there? I had no idea! They are chemically identical to and pretty well indistinguishable by gemologists from natural diamonds. Best of all, they can also be cultured in different shapes--like flat, as for a window of a spaceship. Science is so awesome. That's a diamond I can get behind, even if the whole engagement ring thing leaves a sour taste.

White lab-grown diamonds are still roughly the same price as their mined counterparts, but colored diamonds--yer pinks, yer yellows, yer browns, all of which command a premium among mined diamonds--are about 15% cheaper for lab-grown specimens. The technology to produce high-quality stones is fairly new, though, and I expect those costs to decrease as the process is further refined. Meanwhile, the natural versus synthetic gemological divide is blurred even further by tinkerers who use modified mopeds to "cook" the naturally occurring impurities out of gems to artifically heighten their clarity. (Abstract only on the New Yorker's site; grab it from the library, it's a fascinating read on the global gem trade).

DeBeers, which controls the vast majority of diamond sourcing around the world, has spent the last several decades bottlenecking the diamond trade to create an artificial global sense of diamond scarcity and thereby to inflate prices. (Aside: as I sit here typing, one of DeBeers's "A diamond is forever" commercials just interrupted my date with Anthony Bourdain as we eat our way through Argentina. Bite me, DeBeers. I want to get back to the food.) Diamonds aren't rare; thanks to the industrious underlings who figured out how to jerry rig a moped, high-clarity diamonds aren't even rare now that they can be made out of something of much lower quality. Truly: who would buy these rocks at these prices if they knew just how common they were, when there are adequate, in some cases identical, substitutes that are less pricey? Why?

But diamonds are not the only area in which people pay for rarity, even if they are one of the most extreme (and most extremely silly). Plenty of people want to pay to be "in the club" whatever that club may be. Whether it's impulse buying the last Wii on the shelf because it could be yours and no one else's or, my personal downfall, reflexively purchasing imported or limited release 7-inch records of a song I already own, rarity--or exclusivity, or scarcity, or "hipness," or whatever term you want to use--is alluring. But it's pretty much the opposite of as close as we can get to objective value. Rarity does not create intrinsic value. Be suspicious. Be very suspicious.

Resurrection Sunday--The End of the Compact

Ten points to the first person to identify the musical reference in the post title.

Today is Easter, which means Lent--and my renunciation of retail--has come to a close. How did I do in upholding the Compact?

Well, I wasn't perfect. Here's the tally of what new, nonconsumable items I bought during Lent. All prices are in USD--in the case of those things I bought out of the country, I've approximated the cost after the exchange rate:

a rash guard, for extra sun protection in the water while on vacation. This was one of my caveats from the outset, and the lack of sunburn on my shoulders thanks me for it. About $45, roughly the same as I would have paid in the US.

jewelry while on vacation. OK, two pairs of earrings and a necklace. I did reserve the right to buy jewelry, since it's usually the only souvenir I collect when I travel, but I admit this was overkill, and not really in keeping with the spirit of the original exception. About $60.

trashy magazines, read while (you guessed it) traveling. If I remember correctly, it was two copies of US Weekly, an In Touch, and an OK. For some reason I have trouble reading anything that requires actual thought while in an airport. $US 17.

four yards of a cute fabric that was on sale at reprodepot.com. I don't have a specific project in mind, but I do have two pregnant friends for whom I plan to make gifts, and my fingers had submitted my credit card information before I even realized that I had broken the Compact. $25.

a set of 100 restaurant napkins, bought for the wedding for $75 including shipping--cheaper than renting them. I don't actually know whether these are new or not, since I got them on ebay, but in the spirit of inclusiveness I thought I should list them here as a "maybe."

Obviously I was not 100% successful, but this was definitely a worthwhile challenge. The clear takeaway is that travel bends my iron will in a most embarrassing way.

For the most part, the resolution was surprisingly easy to stick to. I have been really busy at work, which meant very little time I could have been recreationally buying. We also took a two-week vacation in the middle of Lent, when we spent relatively freely, but mostly on experiences rather than on stuff. The few times I have gone shopping during Lent, I have consciously tried to choose consignment, vintage, or resale shops so that my options were necessarily limited to used merchandise.

But when it was hard, it was hard. As evidenced by my abuse of the jewelry exception, when I didn't have a strict limit to stick to it was very easy for me to go overboard. And though I don't shop frequently, when I do it, it's almost instinctive and unconscious. Witness the fabric purchase. As another example, I did have one serious near miss when I spotted a china cabinet and a liquor cabinet online. I showed them to Shiner to make sure he liked it, and when he did, I got fantastically excited that our dining room storage crisis would soon be coming to an end. He said, "you're not going to buy it right now, are you?" "Yes!" I said, giddy, images of magazine-level organization dancing in my head. "But what about Lent?" D'oh. I had completely forgotten. I didn't buy them, promising myself to wait until Easter. I'm not proud that I inadvertently came so close to such a big slip up.

On the other hand, I had a number of what I consider to be successes, too: times when I was sorely tempted to buy and did not. Three of them (apart from the now notorious china cabinet) are especially memorable. First there was my friend's baby shower. I had intended to make her a quilt, but then work exploded and I didn't have time to even cut the fabric, and the night before her shower I still didn't have a gift for her. I very nearly walked to the bookstore and bought her a couple of board books, but instead I whipped up some soft toys with scrap fabric I had in my stash. Then in preparing for our trip, I wanted to buy a couple of new novels that had been recommended to me. Instead, I took a trip to the library and dug into our own personal collection and found four books to keep me busy on the beach. A couple of those turned out to be real gems, too. Finally, and most ridiculously, in following along with the folks over at Apartment Therapy who are doing the Spring Cure, I suddenly felt compelled to buy home decor magazines. I know. They are mostly ads, and I could never afford much of what's in them anyway, but this was like an irrational, all-consuming fever. I had a Barnes and Noble gift card! Surely that's what the cosmos intended me to spend it on! For two days this fever raged, and I valiantly fought back, eventually winning.

It's a little hard to compare my expenses during Lent to my expenses during a regular six-week span. For a third of Lent I was on vacation, which means my spending patterns weren't normal, and that vacation was to a country with a very cash-based economy, so I can't just compare credit card statements to identify exactly how I was spending money differently. But taking those things into consideration, I spent noticably less under the Compact than I do in the average four-week period. For example, the credit card bills that I'll pay at the end of March are less than a third what they usually are, and that's some difference coming from someone who doesn't think she shops very much.

Part of me would like to keep going with the Compact, because I feel like 6 weeks is not really enough time to create new habits, and that's part of what I was hoping to get out of the Compact.

On the other hand, I cannot imagine, say, continuing to plan a wedding while buying only used items. I'm sure it's entirely possible, but I'm trying to make planning less of a hassle, not more of one--the thought of combing ebay or pawn shops week after week to find the right ipod dock and speakers (much cheaper than a DJ, and something we will happily reuse in our home) seems like a special brand of hell.

And then there's the fact that I just don't get off on self-abnegation. I am down with the goal of not buying things just for the hell of it, but when you do have a need or a long-held, well-considered want for something, I have a hard time thinking of it as a party foul to go out and buy it. Yes, I put off ordering the china cabinet for the sake of following the rules of the Compact. But aside from strictly adhering to to rules of the game, I'm not sure I got anything out of delaying that purchase. After a couple of years, am I going to change my mind about needing one by thinking it over for six more days? No. And I am picky enough about aesthetics that I would rather go without that get something that is not really what I want--that's why I've gone without for so long already. So used is not necessarily going to get me there, either. But I do think it would be worth revisting the Compact again in a year or so, after the wedding, after more or less completing our furnishing wish list. I do think there is a point of enoughness to which I am extremely close. I remain very interested in whether I can identify what that point is, and whether I can honestly stop when I hit it.

By the way, I ordered the furniture this morning.