[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.

[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.