Another Monopoly Undermined By Innovation
Better to make rather than mine diamonds.
While natural diamonds take anywhere from 1-3 billion years to form, scientists can now reportedly produce diamonds in 150 minutes. Sherwood reports:
The new method rapidly heats and cools a mix of liquid metals at atmospheric pressure — a fraction of the pressure typically required to make the gems — marking the latest innovation in the world of lab-grown diamonds, which continues to threaten the entrenched diamond industry.
The low cost of making rather than mining continues to drive prices down. This is great news for customers but bad news for the De Beers diamond monopoly, which has been at the heart of it diamond-mining controversy for decades, from reports on its environmental impacts and unethical production practices.
Prices contain information and information creates incentives. Without government protection, most monopolies disappear under market innovation. Bye-bye DeBeers.
We describe the process of transforming scarcities into abundances in our new book, Superabundance, available at Amazon. You can read more at superabundance.com. There has never been a better time to create more life.
Gale Pooley is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and a board member at Human Progress.
This is the power of progress. As I discuss at Risk & Progress, we grow rich in two ways:
First, by raising our incomes. Second, by compressing the cost of goods and services.
The latter is often neglected, but it is extremely important as it allows us to do more with less.