Surprised by the mention of the morality of ‘Blood Diamonds’... this is classic western privilege, where the moral significance of an issue is proportional to the light of our attention. Do we really presume that the life of a wretched child in the Congo is going to improve because we buy an emerald instead?
Not that it makes blood diamonds ok, but I would be curious to know how many people sneering at people buying real diamonds made their comment using hardware produced in a sweatshop, that was produced using minerals acquired using practices that are just as bad as those to acquire diamonds?
Obviously the diamond trade is terrible and is built on the backs of suffering, but a lot of the people I know IRL who literally used the movie blood diamond (or material talking about the benefits of artificial diamonds) to convince their fiance to go for an artificial diamond. But when trying to discuss the ethics of electronic production they literally just do not give a shit. Maybe it's just a classic case of people can only care about so many things, and these people just made the diamond trade their thing to care about, but to me, it came off like they only acted like they gave a shit about the diamond trade to save a few thousand on a ring without pissing off their fiance.
