Oil Boom Diamond Kitsch
OK, so there’s this odd, but interesting site called Oobject.
The site is sort of like a cross between BoingBoing, the old Billboard magazine and a design forum, or as they say themselves: ” … like Billboard charts for gadgets.”
Their latest posting is all about the rise, both in number and level of grotesquerie, of diamond covered doo-dads that only the ugly rich could afford (or desire).
It all seem to follow and fit, if you think about it. Oil is currently over $100 a barrel (and it probably won’t go down much, if at all, so you better get used to it). Essentially oil is about 3 times more expensive than it was 8 years ago.
That rise is cost, means a rise in profits, and all that money has to go somewhere.
Some will get siphoned off by exploration and procuring companies (your Halliburtons, KBRs, RDSs etc.); some of that new-found profit will get skimmed off by transportation entities; and some of the rising profits will get moved into oil company coffers.
The bulk of it will, as always, go into where the production centers are.
The rise in the price of oil is concurrent with a HUGE building boom going on in the gulf states. There is a huge number of 100+ story skyscrapers being built in Dubai; oil rich states are constructing artificial islands by the hundreds; some guy in Abu Dhabi thought it was reasonable to pay $14.3 million for a frickin’ license plate.
Artificial islands and $14.3 million license plates and indoor ski resorts in the middle of desert are all fine and dandy you say, but what if I want to show off just how filthy stinking obscenely rich-rich-rich I am?
How about diamond encrusted Mercedes?
Maybe a diamond encrusted toilet?
A three quarter of a million dollar computer case?
Or (my favorite) a pair of diamond-encrusted boxing gloves?
More of your petro-dollars at work here .
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