artificial scarcity
I have always hated the idea of artificial scarcity. It seems like such a waste of society’s resources. So I was surprised to stumble across an example that I could not condem out of hand.
Mary showed me the work of a photographer that she thinks is really great. I agree the work is great but learned that he prints a limited number of each image to create a market for his work. He like most photographers or print makers produces a limited set of prints. The first five are sold for $5000, the next ten for $10,000 and the last few are sold for $50,000.
Since he can produce an unlimited number of prints, my first reaction was what a waste, then I started wondering if there are examples where someone could justify limiting the amount of something even if there was zero marginal cost to produce that thing.
I can not think of a moral reason for not doing this in the case of art