Per the link by
@Gigem there's a discussion of nanotech in there.
There's an interesting thing going on right now that isn't actually nanotech, but suggests a sort of post-scarcity world that might really transform a certain specific market.
Have you all heard of lab-created diamonds? I hadn't until last fall. But yesterday was my 5 year anniversary, and although my wife and I don't normally exchange actual gifts, it's kind of the first "big" one. So I ordered her diamond earrings, which I knew she wanted. I did a bunch of research and actually landed on lab-created diamonds for the earrings. Why? Because they're no different at the molecular level than mined diamonds, but they're roughly 50% of the cost. I was able to buy two diamonds at just over 1C each, "super ideal" cut, D color, SI1 clarity (which isn't great but they're earrings, not an engagement ring), and the cost was about half of what equivalent mined diamonds would be.
But the interesting thing about lab-created diamonds--and diamonds in general--is that I almost feel like I purchased a falling knife.
The value of diamond isn't based on what it is. It's a piece of crystallized carbon that has nearly no intrinsic value. The value is based, pretty much entirely, on scarcity. Quality diamonds aren't expensive because there's something great about diamonds, they're expensive because they sparkle in jewelry
and because they're rare. They're a good used to denote status because of the exclusivity of finding them in the ground, and the fact that there is more demand than supply.
Right now, lab-created diamonds are cheaper, IMHO largely due to customer bias. They're cheaper not because they're different (again, at the molecular or quality level they're not different), but because the market is discounting them relative to mined diamonds. This creates a really weird situation IMHO. If you say that they're cheaper because they're not mined diamond, you also have to look at the economic cost of producing lab diamonds,
and you might find that they're overpriced relative to production costs. Which would make them both underpriced (because they're being priced compared to traditional mined diamond costs) and overpriced (because there is a huge margin earned that is purely based on the traditional mined diamond costs). Obviously there is SOME positive margin earned between the price of lab-created diamonds on the market and the cost to produce, or else they wouldn't keep producing them.
But the potential here is that a rapid increase in the quantity of lab-created diamonds on the market will actually remove the scarcity element that made diamonds an exclusive status good in the first place. If that's the case, diamond prices will fall. Mined diamonds likely will no longer be sold because there's no economic incentive to mine them when lab-created diamonds exist in high quantities. And lab-created diamonds will be produced at whatever level allows reasonable margin for someone who loves buying jewelry at Target or Jared, but all the "discerning" consumers will move on to another good that still has rarity and exclusion.
I'm not worried. When these earrings arrive (next week--as mentioned we don't buy anniversary gifts so this will be a surprise that I can reasonably say is just because I love her and it just happens to be right after our 5th anniversary lol), I know she'll be ecstatic. But I wonder what the diamond market is going to look like in 10 years. Are diamonds still going to be a "girl's best friend", or is all the status aspect of diamond ownership going to erode because of a glut of lab-created diamonds showing up on the market?
