Yeah but if you are buying at actual market value instead of retail, that's not getting screwed.
I know what you mean, but I think you are still operating on assumptions from WITHIN their own paradoxical construct. Their construct. Not yours.
You appear to believe that the diamond IS worth something beyond just being a handy industrial tool, and that the "Market" of which you speak is somehow still indicative of what the diamond would be worth WITHOUT what has been a few centuries-long advertising and inventory control campaign.
I, on the other hand, am operating on the assumption that it is still a GD spoonful of peanut butter, carefully arranged.
Nothing you, or anybody else in or outside that industry, can ever say will convince me otherwise. It's okay, and I'm not saying I have never spent money on expensive bits of stone, but I don't have to like it or believe in the charade.
-Nate