And yet gold has a relatively higher price than iron. Seems that the "fact" runs up against some reality. We just need that philosopher's stone, eh? Right around the corner, eh?
We also make diamonds as cheaply as we mine them.
Apparently, it's not cheap enough. And that isn't the transmutation of elements anyway.
Science does not always provide immediate financial payback. I'm sure it took a while for Maxwell's work to morph into iPods.
The question here is one of knowledge and understanding, not immediate financial gain.
Aside from that, what price do you put on the lives extended by medicine?
from what I understand about artificial diamonds, the problem is not the cost of manufacture, but the taste of the consumers and resistance from the extant diamond economy, which prevents man-made diamonds from sitting on the fingers of women and bling-addicts.
iirc, there are three factors in this
1. just as there was an initial snobbish dismissal of "cultured" pearls, there is now a snobbish dismissal of artificial diamonds - as if naturally produced rocks are in some way better than man-made ones. This is emotional bias.
2. most synthetic diamonds can be identified as synthetic under alternative light source (I forget the freq.), as they will fluoresce. iirc, some russians are working on a fix for this. last I heard, they had succeeded... and De Beers et alia were NOT pleased.
in other applications - synthetic diamonds of industrial grade are far less expensive to produce than are comparable deposits to mine. however, Boron Nitride in the same adamantine molecular configuration is as cheap and more durable than carbon, so...