Sorry, Mr Conover. I still love your series Adam Ruins Everything!

(The alternative title for this was 'Why Are Diamonds Actually Expensive? But, I mean, no one's gonna click that. There's a gajillion videos saying the exact same thing about it and that title would blend into the menagerie of people who'd say "De Beers We Know!" You gotta go with the provocative clickbaity title, sometimes.)

(Speaking of, this isn't for the synthetic diamond market where there ARE vestigial effects of advertising and monopoly control. This is specifically relating to diamonds which we dig out of the ground, and the context of the video is talking about mined diamonds, not synthetic ones. I've corrected the title to reflect that)

Listen, I'm no simp for large corporations - epsecially ones dealing in conflict materials - but someone has to set the record straight. And who better than me, a volcanologist with dreams of being a gaming YouTuber?

We've all heard some know-it-all at Nandos say: "Diamonds are expensive because De Beers hold a monopoly over diamonds and they did a super successful ad campaign about it - so we all bought into the collective lie and diamonds are a scam!"

While that was true once, De Beers haven't been in control of diamond markets in terms of sales since 2007, or production since 2009. They aren't even the largest company by sales or production. That honour goes to ALROSA. In fact De Beers' monopoly position has been steadily eroding since the 1990s. In 2020 they posted their lowest earnings ever according to the Financial Times. There's significantly more competition in diamond markets today than at any point in human history, yet adjusted for inflation diamonds are actually twice as expensive today as they were when De Beers held a total monopoly. And it can't just be a marketing ploy, because the company’s marketing budget accounted for roughly 1% of sales in 2017, down from about 5% in the 1990s, according to the investment banking firm Morgan Stanley. And when you bring this up to the smart-arse at the restaurant and explain that De Beers physically don’t control the diamond market anymore, so can't be the reason diamond prices are as high as they are, suddenly you're being kicked out of Nandos because "you're making a scene". Well I'm not having it, Kevin! I'm not having it!

Are the jokes cringe? Yes.
Is the research sound? I hope so
At 12:13 when I said million but the graph said billion did I mean billion? Yes

Timecodes:
0:00 - Intro
0:25 - A Quick History of the De Beers Monopoly
2:53 - The Fall of the De Beers Monopoly
6:20 - C H I N A!
7:15 - Demand Isn’t Enough
8:36 - How Diamonds Form
10:20 - Gahcho Kué
11:17 - Running Out of Diamonds
12:52 - Credits/Endcards

References in video.

With thanks to Kevin MacLeod for the music. All music used is credited at the end
https://incompetech.com/music/royalty...

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

Additional Music from: Beck, Ambrose and his Orchestra, Assaf Ayalon, Joe E Lee, Shitty Flute, The National Anthems Channel, Ginger Rogers and Beethoven (the composer, not the dog)