![]() ![]() The DeBeers employee takes the diamond distributor in a small room and present him with a bag of diamonds. There buyers, including retail and wholesale buyers from the New York city diamond district, come to look what DeBeers has to offer them to keep them in business. ![]() The DeBeers diamonds are extracted from the South African mines and marketed in London, at the address of the Diamond Trading company, a DeBeers subsidiary. It the prices are not morally set, the whole advertising exercise is an effort in deceit. Any advertising claims are relying on the concept that the products are attractive at their offered prices, and attractive for different psychological reasons for the buyers. Products of a given quality are much too expensive for what they could be if the prices were allowed to be set by the market forces. Naturally the issues of the quality of products and truth in advertising are all rolled together into the issue of the victimization of the buying public. They are also against the freedom of enterprise for they force possible competitors to obey the cartel directives, often under financial or even physical threats they are victimizing their co-producers or suppliers. They victimize the general buying public. Cartels are immoral because they overcharge the buying public by artificially propping up prices. The whole concept of a cartel is exactly what was the reason for the passing into US law the Sherman Act. A cartel is usually also structured in such a fashion that its members follow the marching orders given by the cartel leader. The establishment of DeBeers consisted therefore, in a parallel effort, of setting up a cartel with other producers in order to control international prices of diamonds.Ī cartel is a loosely, but effective, agreement between producers of a resource, product or service to agree on minimum levels of prices offered for these resources, products and services to the general public. The challenge was that, according to Epstein, while diamonds were a rare resources only a couple of centuries ago, the discovery of extremely rich mines in South Africa and other countries of Africa was threatening to drive the prices down. The purpose of DeBeers was the exploitation of diamond mines in South Africa. Its case was interestingly presented by the PBS TV program "Front Line" with contributions made by Edward Epstein, author of "The Rise and Fall of Diamonds" and Duncan Innes, author of "Anglo-American and the Rise of Modern South Africa."ĭeBeers is a corporation which was set-up by Cecil Rhodes, the British explorer and adventurer who gave his name to the African country of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and to Rhodes scholarships (the darker side of these scholarships will be made evident with the presentation of the elitist bent of Rhodes and DeBeers). However, we present here the example of one company which really defies all standards of business conduct on a grand scale. But we do have to make the difference between absolute, collectivized and/or institutionalized evil (as was the case for communism) which need be fought with priority and/or collectively and relative, individual and random evil which must be considered on a case by case basis. What about old-fashioned business immorality? Are we, social conservatives but also economic conservatives, blind to their transgressions? Social conservatives may be criticized for being more concerned by the actions of corporations which transgress doctrinal Christian no-nos, like supporting abortion (the Saint Antoninus Pro-Life Shopping Guide, as well as the Pro-Life Mutual fund project are casting a glaring light on those) or homosexuality (see our past feature article on Levi-Strauss, the blue-jeans company, which has positioned itself as the international champion of the homosexual cult). SOUTH AFRICA'S DE BEERS: THE MOST UNETHICAL CORPORATION IN THE WORLD
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