Gem Society, as it stands, is unsustainable, both in terms of their rampant mining and colonization, and their caste system.

Let’s start with the first branch. In Jungle Moon, we got our first legit look at a planet that’s been colonized by Gemkind. It’s been severely dug into, not unlike Ronaldo’s assertion that gems “hollow out” planets, but there’s one thing that strikes everyone as odd: It’s dead. No gem bases, no spires, no active kindergartens. It’s all abandoned, right down to the Diamond Base on the moon.

Some have called this into question, as it is inconsistent with our other, previous look into what Gem colonies were supposed to appear as, in It Could’ve Been Great:

However, I would argue that the planet is Jungle Moon *is* in fact what the Earth would have actually looked like if the colonization would have gone forward. Remember, what we see in ICBG is what was *planned* for Earth, not some look into an alternate future. Anyone who plans anything assumes that everything’s gonna work out fine. I imagine the hologram of Earth is what was supposed to happen to the planet in Jungle Moon, but then the unexpected happened: There weren’t enough resources to sustain the colony, for example, or there was a freak solar flare that knocked out the technology, or anything else that Gem engineers didn’t foresee.

Not necessarily that they *couldn’t* foresee it, but rather that no one wanted to be the one to tell the Diamonds that their colonization plan isn’t a good idea (which ties into my points about the Caste System, so let’s put a pin in that), so when the colony stagnates— the mines run dry, kindergartens become ineffective, resource usage outweighs resource production —it has to be abandoned before it can reach it’s originally-stated goal.

There is no greater example of the unsustainability of Homeworld’s resource-draining than Homeworld itself:

There is a misconception going around after LFHTH aired that White Diamond herself was the cause of Homeworld looking like that, but there’s no basis for that other than the white aura, so I very much disagree.

No, it seems to me that Homeworld was so mined-to-shit that, sometime ago, the planet lost structural cohesion right down the middle, and broke into pieces. I think that what was planned for Earth was also planned for Homeworld, but *whoopsie* it turns out hollowing out a planet to its core but still expecting to be able to use it as a viable place for Gems to live isn’t physically feasible.

Peridot mentioned that resources were dwindling on Homeworld, and it shows. I bet there are hardly *any* Kindergartens left functioning on the planet, practically every corner of it drained. If they’d continued with the Jungle Moon planet’s colonization instead of abandoning it like they did, I imagine this is what it would have ended up like.

It would seem colonization of other worlds is the Diamond Authority’s top political priority— it’s what they dedicate ships to, where they get their subjects from, etc. —and the colonization system as it stands will inevitably collapse in on itself, putting countless Gems stationed on those colonies out of work, and, well, making them angry at the Diamonds who didn’t see the stagnation coming.

Now, what about the Caste System? Well, that too, is unsustainable, but in a different sense.

It’s a common phrase that you can only whip a dog so much before it bites back, which is very much applicable to Gemkind. Case in point: Holly Blue and the Quartz Guards at the Zoo. She was beating on Gems under her command every second we saw them, and the second the Crystal Gems made a fool of her, they no longer did as she said.

The Caste System is, for the most part, an illusion. There’s no real reason why a Gem like Holly Blue should be in command of the Amethysts other than that Agates are supposed to be in charge of Quartzes, and that is that. If you ignore the Diamonds’ incredible powers, what are you left with? A bunch of flawed, awful individuals who seem to only care about themselves and some baseless “order of things” rather than the actual wellbeing of their subordinates.

Also, what we see at the end of That Will Be All— Holly being forced to stay mum about the CGs —is a very serious problem growing within the Caste System, I think. No one in Gem Society wants to admit they screwed up to the Diamonds, so acts of rebellion get left unreported by the middle-managers like Holly. A failure of someone under their command is seen as a failure of their command skills, and so they would be punished for letting the rebellion happen at all.

There’s also the subject of Emerald: It’s been, what, a couple weeks since Lars of the Stars? And they still haven’t been intercepted by Homeworld forces? In the battle, she was very careful not to destroy the Sun Incinerator, instead attempting to scare Lars into surrender. I think this is because she didn’t want anyone to find out the ship had been stolen, and the reason the Off Colors haven’t been shot to pieces since the battle is because Emerald’s been playing cover-up roulette trying to keep the Diamonds from finding out.

We see a variation of this with Aquamarine: When Topaz goes against her, she ultimately lets it slide as long as they never do it again, out of fondness, yes, but also, I think, out of a desire to keep her ledger clear of any insubordination.

Aquamarine also showed a big disregard for her orders, first accepting a Steven as a Mydad even though it didn’t make sense, just because she wanted to leave faster, and second disobeying their orders altogether once “Rose Quartz” was revealed.

I believe that these are not exceptions. I believe that this is all extremely common in Homeworld circles. Commanders who care more about themselves and their reputation than they care about the Diamonds’ precious caste system, turning a blind eye to rebellion under their watch because of the consequences they’d receive.

This, too, is not sustainable. Eventually, there are going to be so many unreported instances of insubordination, that all it’ll take is one major blow to the Diamonds’ veneer of importance and there’ll be all the right ingredients for a complete breakdown of social order.

That will be the Diamonds’ legacy. They conquered worlds, sure, but said worlds stagnated only a short while after their colonization started, making you wonder if it was even worth it. They commanded countless Gems, sure, but said Gems went behind their back in one form or another, and they were too wrapped up in their own infighting to see it.