If you bang two diamonds together in rhythm, do you get hard rock music?

Perusing Digg today, I saw a link to an article about diamonds used for engagements. Ah, this traditional (though not even 80 years old) method of showing devotion, sacrifice, and eternal love (though most marriages end in divorce). If it honestly means that much to you on a personal level, then more power to you, but to me things like this often seem to just be to show off, usually to people that just don't care. Prior to the De Beers marketing campaign, engagement rings had no one particular stone associated with them. When I see a huge ring on someone, I'm not impressed by the level of commitment on the part of the man, I think "what a waste of financial resources". That amount of money put into a ring could have been used for the home, vacation/honeymoon, child's education, or hell, even a new plasma television. I would bet anything that the couple would spend more time staring at the plasma TV in the first week of ownership than they would at the ring their entire lives.

People don't consider the economic opportunity cost that diamond sucks up. It isn't an investment, no jeweler above the level of the corner store pawn shop will purchase a diamond at any where near the 'worth' because they want to perpetuate selling them at such a high price and keeping the cost artificially high. A $3000 diamond (assuming you can pay it all off at once and not finance it at high interest rates) over 20 years at just 5% would be worth over $8,000 if interest is just compounded annually. That ring certainly wouldn't be worth that much then, and I don't even think you could sell it for even what you paid when purchased. I just dislike how everyone seems to think that it is expected behavior and anything less somehow signifies that the guy is somehow lacking or unworthy. I must give credit to one of the longest lasting and most effective marketing campaigns ever, for that is all that it is; marketing.

An ounce of sense would seem to dictate that unless money is already falling out of the pockets that one actually just invest the money spent on a lavish ring and wedding by purchasing a home or even use it on some future vacations that would inevitably be a lot more worth it throughout the years as a means to get away and enjoy each other. How many people say they cannot afford to travel, however do not even realize that the trinket worn on the finger could have funded a couple of grand trips if planned well enough? Withing a marriage, women often enough seem to hope for equitably divided responsibilities such as housework, child-rearing, and income through career, however the engagement ring ironic falls well outside this consideration.

http://www.slate.com/id/2167870/pagenum/all/#page_start