Diamonds are forever (inducing headaches)

So, what would you do if you got a hold of a more or less infinite supply of one of the earth's most precious materials? Would you sell it and live the life of a rich person? Would you release it into the market and make that material lose its rarity? Would you sell it for the sake of assisting the poor and downtrodden? How you answer this question says a lot about who you are.

You see, in the story "the diamond as big as the Ritz," a man comes across a diamond that is literally a cubic mile across. That much diamond entering circulation could instantly ruin the entire diamond market. However, slowly introducing it into the market would make the person in question rich beyond belief. So let's look at the options.

The most obvious (and most self beneficial) choice is to simply keep the diamond hidden and sell it slowly into the market for a huge profit. This is what the Washingtons (the family in the story) choose to do with the diamond. However, while this is certainly a good choice in terms of self benefit, it doesn't help anyone else.

Another option would be to use money from diamond sales to help other people. This would result in a Robin Hood style taking of money from the rich in order to help the poor or whoever. It might make a difference in some areas because of sheer scale (the Washingtons are described as being so rich that the official richest men on Earth are small fry), but ultimately it runs the risk that either the people receiving the help or the people handing it out will abuse it.

A third option entails simply releasing the diamond into the market all at once. This would make a huge impact on diamond prices, because with all this extra diamond in the market it could easily make diamond have very little market value. However, because diamond is vital in industrial processes, an abundance of diamond would allow diamond based tools to become much cheaper, benefiting society as a whole (but completely destroying diamond's worth in jewelry and ruining diamond marketers).

All in all, there really aren't any "correct choices" on how to utilize that much diamond. No matter what you chose to do, some party or another will suffer. That's why it's really hard to criticize the Washingtons effectively. Aside from the ridiculous amount of trouble they went through protecting the diamond, the choice they made (self benefit) is arguably the least damaging one; no one loses from it. Yes, the people they sold the diamonds to paid full market value for them, but the other option is just horrifyingly bad for the gem economy.

For lack of a better graphic, here's a hastily done scumbag diamond.