I had been reading Rob’s excellent writing for a while, and was honored at the invitation to offer a consumer’s perspective. I’m quite sure people in the audience looked on me as a naive idealist, and that’s fine: my conclusions may be faulty, but I still feel confident in saying that I’ve read a hell of a lot more than most consumers have on the subject, and had already been told by some pretty amazing people that I had clearly done my homework.
A particular analogy that was offered by industry representatives was that of a salt shaker and the grains of salt: “We can certify the contents of the entire salt shaker as being conflict-free, but we can’t provide the same level of assurances for each individual grain of salt”.
I found this analogy to be particularly irritating, and the reason for this is simple: for us consumers (the people that keep the entire industry afloat), those individual grains of salt are the entire salt shaker. Diamonds aren’t exactly cheap things, and I don’t like being told that the small fortune I’ve just handed over wasn’t enough to bring assurances of origins of the only stone I care about. Are assurances for every piece of melee or every 2,3-pointer (0.2-0.3 carats) that makes up the bulk of diamonds in the supply chain necessary? Of course not. But if it can be done for a Kimye-sized stone, it can be done for my center stone, too.