This was an eye opening experience for me as a younger nerd, something that taught me how truly irrational many humans are. Diamonds are clearly pretty, but buying them props up a cartel and indirectly leads to warfare, enslavement, and death. Clearly a young woman would happily understand why I would have ethical objections to this...
...and to this day, I don't understand how some people's minds even work. (It was a hypothetical discussion and my life wasn't appreciably derailed by this conversation, it's just memorable to me because of the utter incomprehension I felt.)
If you want to look at the bigger systemic effects, they are these: Africa's very richness in easily exploitable natural resources is exactly the reason there is so much warfare and violence.
There's really no gain to capture economic centers in developed parts of the world, because they do things like finance or entrepreneurship or software which are actually dependent on a stable settled population in a consistent legal system. That's why despite all the gangsters in LA, they just sell drugs instead of taking over Hollywood by force and trying to profit from the film industry. Even when gangsters take something over in this country, it's through infiltration rather than mounting a physical invasion of the city.
African gangsters (better known as "rebels", "paramilitary groups", etc.), on the other hand, can actually take over a diamond mine or something and collect all of the income relatively quickly. Crush the demand for diamonds, and the diamond-rich parts of Africa become that much more stable just because they'll have to work harder to generate wealth. And then, maybe, it won't be worthwhile for the paramilitaries and rebels to attack it.
> It also of course, provides legitimate employment to a lot of people throughout Africa.
It's only 'legitimate' and productive because people like them so much; if people stopped liking them so much, then such employment ceases to be legitimate and becomes on par with being paid to dig a ditch and then fill it right back up.
...and to this day, I don't understand how some people's minds even work. (It was a hypothetical discussion and my life wasn't appreciably derailed by this conversation, it's just memorable to me because of the utter incomprehension I felt.)