I wear a £20 titanium wedding ring from Amazon. The symbolic significance is what we imbue in it, not what it itself is.

> real diamonds are 'better' and everyone knows it.

Personally disagree. That whole "3 months' salary that will last forever" thing? A lab diamond will last just as forever as a mined one. I'd personally rather have one from a lab than one dug out of the earth by some African dude who spends his days sweating underground.

Yeah, idk. I’m not against the idea of a 3 month value reserve as a financial security token to de-risk a marriage proposal, but it should be something that can be liquidated for a similar value. Just setting 3 months of your work on fire is a really stupid and irresponsible move for most people, and their kids are ultimately the ones that suffer.

Not only that, imagine this scenario: something terrible happens. Your wife has to sell her jewelry to take care of herself and your child. Would you rather have bought her a $20000 ring that can maybe be sold for $3000? Or a ring with actual intrinsic value that might actually be worth more than what you paid, but at least fetch 80%.

When I think of how that would feel for her to know that I paid a foolish amount for something of inflated symbolic bling rather than a something of value, I get embarrassed just imagining it. To me that is an abdication of duty.

That’s the difference between diamonds and actual precious stones, or at lower price points a nice heavy gold ring with an inexpensive, lab grown gem.

For beauty, silicon carbide beats diamond hands down. If you want value and natural origins, a quality ruby or emerald is spectacular and actually rare and rationally market-priced. Gold is nice.

Until you get into very large and actually rare stones, diamonds are a scam, pure and simple. The value of a near flawless 1 carat stone at the mine is about two hundred dollars. Cutting costs about half that. To buy it, that stone might fetch $7000. To sell it, you might get $1000 if you’re lucky. That is not a store of value. It’s a symbol of gullibility or a boast that I have so much money that I can burn it without being irresponsible. The kind of boast that if you can’t back it up IRl makes you impossible to take seriously.

If you just really, really like diamonds, knock yourself out. But don’t delude yourself into believing they are valuable. Better yet, go get one yourself, smuggled out of a mine or otherwise at the source. Get it cut and polished, or better yet do it yourself. That I totally respect and has character, integrity, and value baked in.

As for status or something like that, I suppose there is a case to be made that it symbolizes a burnt offering. So that makes sense, but only against a backdrop of demonstrative excess. If you have a diamond ring and a loan of any kind that is anything other than strategic tax planning, that means your kids are worse off for your vanity. If you’ve got more money than god and you want to show that you can waste cash and it doesn’t matter, wear that ring studded with sub-museum grade diamonds a all day long, you’re making your point. It’s vulgar, but you’re making your point. I can see it. It’s like the track suit.

Otherwise, you may as well lace up your clown shoes.

But, that’s just my opinion. In all reality it’s a useful social signal, like certain religious expression.

> it's sad that the cost of living prices people out from nice things

Cost of living can only go up if people are willing to pay more. People are paying more for what we deem living expenses because what they consider "nice" has changed.

In the past people would spend more on a diamond and less on a house because they were out and about all day and wanted others to see the diamond. Now, they stay home to scroll through TikTok (or post on HN), so they would rather spend more on a house instead.

If diamonds, or something like it, became more interesting to people again, they'll soon start turning their sending in that direction — away from where they are currently directing it.