Look, I don't care what people buy voluntarily for their spouses to express their love. The problem is that the diamond industry, through its marketing, has created this ridiculous notion that if you don't buy a diamond for your wife-to-be, then you are some kind of cheapskate and you don't really love her as much as someone who does buy a diamond.
In other words, many people feel intense social pressure to buy (or receive) the diamond, so they aren't really buying it out of genuine love. They are merely falling victim to an absurd marketing scam.
And I just can't help but wonder how many of those poor schmucks who buy the diamond can't afford to buy a house or send their children to college.
I think you over rate this so called social pressure. I have seen many a soon to be groom beam at the thought of providing his new wife with a diamond.
You don't like them we have established that. It doesn't give you the right to insult all those that do by calling them or me (since I buy them) idiots and schmucks. If you don't want to buy your wife a diamond and that is ok with her, that is yours and hers business. But don't insult those who choose to show their love by purchasing diamonds for one another.
I am sure there are things you spend your money on that a lot of people here would consider a waste of money as well. Live and let live. Have a nice day, with or without diamonds.
I'm not a big diamond fancier. But I don't understand how the DeBeers marketing approach is a "scam." Is it any different than marketing campaigns to create social pressure to buy a new car every year, own new HDTVs, fancy houses or the kind of toilet paper that bears use in the woods or thousands of other products sold through the American capitalist system?
No such pressures are felt in socialist systems where people aren't allowed such choices. One of the challenges of living in a capitalist consumer society is learning to cope with and say "no" to the many manipulative messages we're tempted with daily. But I much prefer it to the alternatives.