leader 1: see that bridge right there, I got 2 million in my pocket
leader 2: see that road, I got 4 million in my pocket
leader 3: with a smudge on his face, see that building? leader 1 & 2 look at him with amazement and go, "what building" & he goes, EXACTLY!
& for the record I really live in Africa (Ethiopia)
The people of Botswana don't even rate a mention in the article, they're likely not going to see a single dime of the proceeds which will be in the many tens of millions of US$.
Also, they are one of the largest producers of rough diamonds in the world, so a single stone may be a big deal for the company extracting it, but it means hardly anything to the country.
Africa has some insane level of corruption and poverty, but there are some exceptions (namely, Botswana and Mauritius).
>Last week, Hong Kong billionaire Joseph Lau paid 48.6 million Swiss francs ($48.4 million) at Sotheby’s in Geneva for a 12.03-carat blue diamond, the most spent on a jewel at auction. A day earlier, he paid 28.7 million francs for a 16.08-carat pink diamond. Both purchases were for his 7 year-old daughter, his office said.
So diamonds might have a fair price of, to be generous, 1000 * times the cost of coal. So diamonds cost the ballpark of $50 per kilogram.
Obviously they don't right now, but it gets you thinking about the intrinsic value of diamond and how that price might move in the future.
Obviously they don't right now, but it gets you thinking about the intrinsic value of processors and how that price might move in the future.
See for instance http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/08/how-low-...
So, the demand for these diamonds is not driven by their diamond-ness, just as the James Bond set Astons fetch higher value at auction than the same model sold at retail.
You can already see a version of this by heading to any jewelry shop and comparing lab diamond prices to the stuff sold by Tiffany's etc. Or just asking any young, not yet married lady in the street if she'd be OK with a synthetic.
A "synthetic" diamond is 100% a genuine diamond, made from the same stuff as mined diamonds.
Close. Current prices for industrial diamonds seem to be more like $100-400 pr. kilogram depending on exactly what you want. Of course those diamonds aren't exactly the type you put into jewelry.
IIRC the price was closer to 20 times that for diamond dust, did something change very recently?
On the other hand, flags, religious symbols, and monuments don't have a ton of intrinsic value either, but humans are funny that way, with their social contrivances.
