Humanity’s singular, most consistent talent is the assignment of astronomical value to the completely useless. We have spent the better part of a century convinced that pressurized charcoal is the ultimate symbol of eternal devotion, a triumph of marketing over logic that would make a used car salesman weep with envy. Now, as the gears of this particular scam begin to grind against the reality of a world that can’t afford rent, let alone a geological anomaly, we find an African nation—let’s not bother naming it, they are all essentially just administrative zones for the extraction of things the West uses to feel better about its empty life—sitting on 18 million carats of unsold diamonds. Eighteen million. That is not a stockpile; that is a cry for help from an economy that bet the farm on the gullibility of the global middle class.

The statistics are, in a word, pathetic. This country managed to produce more shiny pebbles in 2024 than anyone except Russia. Being second to Russia in any category usually involves a depressing tally of human rights violations or a chronic shortage of functional indoor plumbing, but here it is a race to see who can fill more vaults with inventory that nobody wants. The diamonds are piling up like the unread emails in a middle manager’s inbox, uselessly glinting in the dark while the government stares at its ledger with the panicked expression of a gambler who just realized the house doesn’t actually accept ‘prestige’ as currency. It is a monumental failure of imagination, a state-level commitment to a 1950s fantasy of luxury that has been decimated by the cold, hard efficiency of the laboratory.

Let’s look at the performative morality of the Left, who will undoubtedly view this slump as a victory for ‘ethical’ consumerism. They’ve swapped their ‘blood diamonds’ for lab-grown rocks, convinced that by purchasing a stone created in a microwave in New Jersey, they have somehow saved the world. It’s the same vapid, self-congratulatory posturing they apply to everything. They aren't saving anyone; they’re just buying a cheaper version of the same vanity while the African miners they claim to pity lose the only subsistence-level wages they had. The hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a—well, not a diamond, apparently, because those are currently being used as doorstops. On the other side, the Right-wing traditionalists and the greed-maddened ‘market purists’ are wringing their hands over the ‘devaluation of authenticity.’ They want us to believe that a rock is only special if it was dug out of the ground by someone who hasn't seen a dentist in three decades. They cling to the ‘scarcity’ myth with the desperate grip of a drowning man, ignoring the fact that the scarcity was always a lie manufactured by cartels to keep the prices high enough to fund their private islands.

The reality is that the diamond market is a corpse being propped up by the nostalgia of people who still think a wedding ring is a solid investment. In 2024, the world has finally realized that you can't eat carbon, you can't use it to power a car, and you certainly can't use it to pay off the interest on a predatory student loan. The stockpile is growing because the myth is dying. The 18 million carats represent a physical manifestation of the sunk cost fallacy. The government in question is begging for a return to the status quo, hoping that some magic marketing campaign will once again convince a 24-year-old in Ohio that he needs to spend three months’ salary on a pebble to prove he isn't a loser. But that 24-year-old is busy buying fractional shares of dog-themed cryptocurrency, which is equally useless but at least doesn't require a velvet box.

There is something deeply satisfying about watching a commodity based entirely on human vanity collapse under its own weight. The irony is that as the supply increases, the ‘value’ should plummet, yet the industry continues to pretend that these stones are rare treasures. They are sitting on mountains of the stuff, literally enough to pave a highway from Gaborone to New York, and yet they expect us to treat each individual stone as a miracle of nature. It’s a collective delusion that is finally reaching its expiration date. The African producers are trapped in a cage of their own making, having failed to diversify because it was easier to just keep digging holes. Now they have the holes, they have the rocks, and they have absolutely no idea what to do with either.

In the end, this isn't an economic story; it’s a philosophical one. It’s a reminder that nothing has value unless we are collectively stupid enough to agree that it does. And as the vaults overflow with 18 million carats of unwanted glitter, it seems the world is finally, if only by accident, becoming a little less stupid. Or perhaps we’ve just found new, more digital ways to be morons. Either way, the diamonds are staying in the dirt where they belong, and honestly, the sheer boredom of the situation is the most offensive part. We’re watching an entire industry drown in its own supply, and all we can do is yawn at the glittery wreckage.