Nah, Penguins really do value shiny pebbles and they trade them, especially males wooing females.

De Beers would be like if I destroyed the artic and enslaved the penguins to find the pebbles and give them to me to hoard.

Then I only sold 10k a year so people thought they were rare when really any pebble is shinny if you shine it.

Like, De Beers is one of the most evil fucking companies, I'd have to be chopping flippers off all over the place to make that analogy work