Amit's Blog

Diamonds Uncut: The Cartel's Grip, Lab's Spark, and Humanity's Shiny Blind Spot In the glittering world of diamonds, where billion-year-old carbon crystals meet cutting-edge labs, a seismic shift is underway. De Beers' iron-fisted cartel, once unchallenged, absorbed Soviet Russia's vast Siberian yields through secret pacts to stave off market floods, but autonomy dawned in the 2000s amid antitrust pressures. Today, low-cost producers like ALROSA ($70-100 per carat) and Catoca ($50-80) anchor natural supply, yet lab-grown diamonds (LGDs) at $5-20 per carat erode prices by 80-90%, capturing 10-15% market share. Projections eye 60% LGD dominance by 2035 via scalability and ethics, but natural premiums persist through rarity myths and emotional branding. Is this a scam? De Beers' artificial scarcity screams yes, exploiting human gullibility rooted in behavioral biases. This essay unravels the history, economics, and psychology, revealing a market at its inflection...

The Perpetual Money Machine: How Television Dethroned Film as Entertainment’s Ultimate Wealth Builder   In the grand arena of entertainment finance, a silent revolution has occurred. While blockbuster films capture headlines with billion-dollar box office hauls, it is the television series, particularly the multi-camera sitcom, that has proven to be the most potent and enduring wealth-generation engine in history. This essay argues that the backend profit participation model, syndication, and the creation of valuable library assets have allowed top-tier television shows to generate far greater long-term, passive wealth for their creators, casts, and studios than all but the most monolithic movie franchises. Through an analysis of iconic series like Seinfeld, Friends, and The Big Bang Theory, contrasted with the "home run" model of film, we will explore how the small screen’s “compound interest” model built fortunes that continue to grow decades after the final ep...