Artificial Scarcity Research Articles

Garth Brooks Soundalikes, YouTube Misinformation, and Authenticity Politics

Country musician Garth Brooks has long resisted digital distribution of his recordings, which remain unavailable on most streaming platforms. This artificial scarcity has led audiences to settle for virtually identical recordings performed by cover musicians. Known as soundalikes, these recordings garner hundreds of millions of streams across platforms. On YouTube, uploaders often post soundalikes with misleading titles, causing listeners to mistake soundalikes for original Brooks recordings. This widespread practice inspires users to debate the ethical, aesthetic, and economic implications of soundalikes using YouTube’s comments forum. This article uses text data mining to examine online reception for thirty-seven YouTube videos featuring Brooks and his soundalikes, comprising over 24,000 comments. Alienated from musical labor and absent authoritative paratexts and distribution networks, these listeners compensate by relying upon social media to fill in epistemological gaps and develop a new ethics of listening. Echoing historical discourses on artistic forgery, some listeners invest in exposing deception, posing as style experts whose sometimes erroneous attributions often spill over into negative aesthetic and ethical judgments. Yet others enjoy soundalikes as adequate alternatives, focusing on personal meaning or mimetic craft, thereby eroding the authority of the original recording as a uniquely expressive artifact. Broader user reflections on digital distribution reveal YouTube as a significant site of meaning-making, community formation, and epistemic danger. As deepfakes and other musical deceptions proliferate, this article demonstrates how deregulated social media distribution can destabilize previously straightforward questions of authorship and reshape attitudes toward artistic integrity and just listening habits.

Can Multi-Sensory Affordance Mitigate the Shortcomings of Metaverse offerings?

ABSTRACT This study explores consumer attitudes and purchase intentions for Metaverse offerings, focusing on gaming avatars and platforms, through affordance theory. Analyzing data from 478 consumers with structural equation modeling and artificial neural networks, the research shows that presence based on anthropomorphism and interactivity enhances positive attitudes and purchase intentions. However, unmet psychological ownership needs and perceptions of artificial scarcity diminish these effects. Multi-sensory affordance compensates for these negative impacts, improving attitudes and purchase intentions. Offering a novel conceptualization of avatar affordances, this study addresses literature gaps and provides practical insights for developers to enhance user engagement and monetize Metaverse goods.

Allocation problem in cross-platform ride-hail integration

We consider a ride-hail system in which a third-party integrator receives ride requests and allocates them to ride service platforms. The ride allocation problem (RAP) is modeled as a Stackelberg game. The integrator, as the leader, chooses the allocation that maximizes its profit, by pricing the rides such that no platform (i.e., follower) can find a more profitable allocation. In pursuit of self-interest, the integrator may refuse to match as many rides as the platforms are willing to serve, thereby injecting an artificial scarcity into the system. To protect the platforms from over exploitation, an exogenous reserve price is introduced to bound their per capita profit from below. We formulate RAP as a bilevel pricing problem, and convert it to a single-level problem by dualizing the lower level. When artificial scarcity is eliminated and all reserve prices are set to zero, we prove the single-level problem can be turned into a mixed integer-linear program that equals its linear relaxation, thus becoming polynomially solvable. Moreover, this version of RAP is shown to be related to cooperative assignment games. Numerical experiments confirm that artificial scarcity negatively affects matching productivity and social welfare. The integrator is favored to take most profits, and leveraging artificial scarcity strengthens its dominance. Moreover, the tighter the supply, the more the integrator benefit from artificial scarcity. The reserve price helps redistribute benefits from the integrator to the platforms. However, demanding an excessively large reserve price may depress the platforms’ profits, while undermining system efficiency.

Suffering Together: Photos and Stories of Nsukka Residents During Nigeria's 2023 Currency Redesign Crisis

The Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) attempt to redesign the 200, 500, and 1000 naira notes by December 2022 led to a cash crunch and humanitarian crisis, exposing the federal government's shortsightedness and inherent weakness. Amidst the crisis that peaked between late January and February 2023, opportunities for social connections and shared experiences emerged. In this essay and visual archive, I explore the financial crisis phenomenon in Nsukka metropolis, Southeastern Nigeria, from a historical perspective, integrating personal insights, respondents' views, and archival sources. Analysis of observational notes, visual and textual data through the lens of Critical Theory reveals the importance of social connection and cultural ideology among Nsukka residents during a difficult time in Nigerian history. Photographic images of crowded bank scenes and remarks like "You are not the only person" evoke personal and public misery and frustration during the currency redesign crisis. The argument is that those in power can create complex situations like artificial scarcity of valuable commodities for questionable reasons, while the masses bear the brunt and enact and demonstrate servility in the process.

Ethics of Manufacturing and Supplying Bottled Water: A Systematic Review

Bottled water is one of the most consumed healthy beverages in the world. At a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.3%, bottled water sales may surpass USD 500 billion by 2030. While this indicates how popular bottled water is among consumers, it does not underscore various ethical concerns raised against the product and its business concept. The purpose of the paper is to investigate the ethics of manufacturing and supplying bottled water. It uses a systematic review of the literature through the PRISMA method to determine the major ethical concerns surrounding these topics. A total of 107 articles were identified, and 31 were subjected to further reviews and analysis. The study found that the manufacturing and supply of bottled water may be unethical if it ends in deliberate pollution and artificial scarcity. Water is an essential product that should be made available and accessible freely to support lives. The use of bottled water has benefits because pollution is removed during processing, which prevents the spread of diseases. In addition, it is practical to transport and consume it. Water bottlers, however, seek to convert water into an exclusive product for profits. This draws attention to the ethics of justice, care, and professionalism which collectively protect consumers against corporate greed and exploitation. Water bottlers contribute to significant environmental pollution and have done little to recycle or reuse plastics to minimize the potential environmental damage. More than 80% of plastic bottles end up in waste and may be washed down into the oceans where they affect the marine ecosystem.

Using spectrum allocations to address indigenous rights claims: The case of New Zealand

In February 2022, the New Zealand Government announced that a yet-to-be-formed “Māori Spectrum Entity” would “receive an ongoing allocation of 20 percent of future national commercial spectrum allocations, at no cost.” This is in addition to the 25 percent of spectrum designated for 5G technology (mid-band, 3.4–3.8 GHz) under the Māori Spectrum Working Group agreement. The novel arrangement, which creates a perpetual obligation rather than simply a one-off transfer, appears to settle a long-standing dispute between the Māori indigenous people of New Zealand and the Government regarding a claim under an 1840 treaty that Māori were entitled to a share of spectrum due to their historic property rights and the Government's obligation to ensure that their language could flourish. Further support apparently derives from New Zealand's obligations as a signatory to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.The decision is notable for the lack of analysis of the expected effects on long-standing sector competition and efficiency objectives in the New Zealand telecommunications industry. Importantly, it introduces a tension into New Zealand spectrum policy between the (historic) allocation of spectrum rights to achieve the most economically efficient future outcome for the benefit of all New Zealanders (including all Māori), and the (post-memorandum) allocation where a preferential set-aside has been created to address a narrow distributional objective in spectrum “ownership” and governance involving only a subset of the population identifying as Māori.While raising the latter question, this paper addresses the competition and economic efficiency issues absent so far in official consideration of the arrangement. Using comparative economic and policy analysis, we find that while wealth and control is transferred from the Crown to the Māori entity, the Māori entity faces very different opportunities and incentives to deploy the spectrum in the most socially-useful manner compared to commercial operators. The “set-aside” creates both artificial scarcity for commercial spectrum and alters the strategic options for all parties due to the Māori rights being perpetual and not subject to the same terms and conditions as commercial spectrum. Additional burdens are imposed on New Zealand telecommunications service consumers not borne by those in jurisdictions without such policies, and relative to the counterfactual of full open auction of the relevant rights.We conclude that the agreement effectively subjugates sector competition and efficiency objectives to distributional concerns. Furthermore, granting specific policy development rights to the Māori entity suggests the agreement is not simply a vehicle for administering Māori spectrum but instead establishes a constitutional “co-governance” partnership between a state agency and the Māori entity governing future New Zealand spectrum policy. These fundamental changes to spectrum policy are unprecedented internationally.

How to pay for saving the world: Modern Monetary Theory for a degrowth transition

Degrowth lacks a theory of how the state can finance ambitious social-ecological policies and public provisioning systems while maintaining macroeconomic stability during a reduction of economic activity. Addressing this question, we present a synthesis of degrowth scholarship and Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) rooted in their shared understanding of money as a public good and their common opposition to artificial scarcity. We present two arguments. First, we draw on MMT to argue that states with sufficient monetary sovereignty face no obstacle to funding the policies necessary for a just and sustainable degrowth transition. Increased public spending neither requires nor implies GDP growth. Second, we draw on degrowth research to bring MMT in line with ecological reality. MMT posits that fiscal spending is limited only by inflation, and thus the productive capacity of the economy. We argue that efforts to deal with this constraint must also pay attention to social and ecological limits. Based on this synthesis we propose a set of monetary and fiscal policies suitable for a stable degrowth transition, including a stronger regulation of private finance, tax reforms, price controls, public provisioning systems and an emancipatory job guarantee. This approach can support broad democratic mobilization for a degrowth transition.

CCI’s Jurisdictional Conflict with the Proposed Cement Industry Regulator: An Analysis

Controversial activities by manufacturers in the Indian cement industry have repeatedly invited investigations by the Competition Commission of India (CCI) for allegations of anti-competitive cartelising agreements. These manufacturing firms have created an artificial scarcity of production and supply in the market, using their association meetings as a front for illegal collusive activities. In spite of CCI having penalised the firms for their activities, the continued cartelisation in the cement market has led the Indian government to propose the establishment of a cement and steel industry regulator for proper governance. Along these lines, this paper aims to achieve a middle ground for removing conflict and ensuring cooperation between CCI and the proposed regulator. The author takes the initiative to study the nature of the cartelising activities of Indian cement manufacturers and the action taken by CCI through analysing the stance of the Supreme Court on the primacy of institutions in competition law matters relating to the cement industry. The paper additionally discusses competition enforcement against cement cartels in China and South Africa—two developing nations competing with the growing Indian economy and facing the same issues of deep-rooted cartelisation in the cement industry.

Fables of scarcity in IP.

In this chapter, I use methods drawn from literary analysis to bear on artificial scarcity and explore how literary and legal storytelling engages in scarcity mongering. I find three particular narrative strategies calculated to compel a conclusion in favor of propertization: the spectacle of need, the diversionary tactic, and the rallying cry. First, I unpack the spectacle of need and its diversionary aspects through several literary accounts of scarcity and starvation. I juxtapose Franz Kafka's "A Hunger Artist," a story explicitly centered on a wasting body, with J.M. Coetzee's The Life and Times of Michael K. Second, to explore how scarcity fables offer diversionary tactics that redirect attention away from actual scarcity, I consider NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. NFTs reflect the arbitrary value scarcity can produce, especially when artificially generated. Yet NFTs offer a spectacle of need that distracts from actual scarcity, riding a wave of expansionist property logic that suggests that more ownership is the answer. Third, to consider the scarcity fable's propertarian rallying cry, I offer an extended close reading of a copyright dispute, Leonard v. Stemtech, involving a pair of microscopic stem cell photographs deemed so scarce they were valued at 100 times their past licensing history. Leonard illustrates how a scarcity fable may look in the context of intellectual property ("IP"). The nature of this chapter is necessarily conceptual and speculative, designed to raise questions rather than attempting conclusively to answer them. Through juxtaposition of literary accounts and one legal case study, fables of scarcity emerge as a genre whose very appearance in certain contexts ought to give scholars and policymakers pause. In copyright litigation, in which expansionist property narratives may be especially harmful to the public domain and subsequent creators, scarcity fables may be made to provide apparent support for potentially dangerous changes. Identifying scarcity fables as such when they appear in copyright cases could trigger review of the asserted scarcity and a more searching inquiry into whether the proposed solution could worsen actual scarcity.

Production Controls in Heavy Oil and Bitumen Markets: Surplus Transfer Due to Alberta’s Curtailment Policy

In January 2019, the Canadian province of Alberta enacted limits on crude oil and bitumen production. These production controls, a policy referred to as curtailment, represent a shift for a government that historically avoided market intervention. The policy was designed to shrink a growing and prolonged price differential between the Western Canadian Select price of oil, the key benchmark for Alberta’s heavy oil production, and the West Texas Intermediate benchmark. The curtailment created artificial scarcity, shrinking the price differential from more than $40 USD per barrel in November 2018 to less than $15 USD per barrel in February 2019. In the process, this policy transferred market surplus from refiners, mainly those in the US Midwest, to producers in Alberta. We review this large-scale market intervention and calculate the magnitude of the economic transfer. We find the curtailment increased producer surplus by $659M CAD per month and reduced consumer surplus by $763M per month. At the margin, every $1 reduction in consumer surplus translates into a $0.71 gain in producer surplus. We further show that if the Government of Alberta’s objective was to maximize short-run producer surplus, it should further scale back production, setting the curtailment rate at 25% rather than the initial 8.7%.

Artificial Scarcity in Housebuilding and the Impact on Affordability: The Return of Absolute Rent

AbstractThe slow response of volume housebuilders to changes in demand has been cited as a contributing cause of a global crisis of housing affordability and allegations of land banking have persistently dogged the industry. This article reviews the supply responsiveness of speculative housebuilders in the United Kingdom and Australia through the neglected Marxian analytic category of absolute rent. Absolute rent directs attention to the relationship between the value of land and the cost of housing and models a market in which landowners may withdraw land from supply to inflate prices. Through the lens of absolute rent, the real estate practices of the housebuilding industry can be understood as a strategy of artificial scarcity straddling land and housing markets. The findings of this investigation demonstrate the insights to be gained by a return to absolute rent that valuably expand the current debate on the supply and cost of housing.

The Internet of Musical Stuff (IoMuSt): ubimus perspectives on artificial scarcity, virtual communities and (de)objectification

Part of the recent developments in Ubiquitous Music (ubimus) research involve the proposal of the Internet of Musical Stuff (IoMuSt) as an expansion and complement to the Internet of Musical Things (IoMusT). The transition from IoMusT to IoMuSt entails a critique of blockchain and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) as technologies for allotment, disciplination and regimentation of formerly open and freely accessible artistic web content. In brief, the replacement of the operative concepts constructed around “things” with strategies based on “stuff” highlights the underlying interconnected processes and factors that impact interaction and usage, pointing to resources that become disposable and valueless within an objectified and monetized musical internet. This conceptual and methodological turn allows us to deal with distributed-creativity phenomena in marginalized spaces, highlighting the role of resources that are widely reproducible, fluid and ever-changing. In this paper, we address IoMuSt-based responses to issues such as the artificial production of scarcity associated with the application of NFTs. The selected musical examples showcase the meshwork of dynamic relationships that characterizes ubimus research. In particular, we focus on a comprovisation project involving VOIP visual communication through Skype, Meet and Zoom, a ubimus experience involving a Telegram chatbot and a set of musical experiments enabled by an online tool for remote live patching.

‘Mercatores isti regulandi’: Monopolies and moral regulation of the market in Pedro de Oñate’s De contractibus

Summary Compared to the writings of other teólogos-juristas belonging to the so-called School of Salamanca, Pedro de Oñate’s (1567-1646) De contractibus has met with little if almost no interest in the literature. It nevertheless marks an epochal achievement in the history of juridical and economic thought. Published between 1646 and 1654, Oñate’s De contractibus epitomizes five centuries of scholastic thinking about the moral regulation of the market. It is a spectacular work, addressing hundreds of problems related to contractual agreements and commercial life in general. This paper offers an overview of Oñate’s lengthy assessment of monopolistic practices, including price-fixing cartels, import barriers, the creation of artificial scarcity, and legal monopolies, including the conceptualization of intellectual property. Two major conclusions can be reached from the close-reading of Oñate’s treatment of monopolistic practices. First, Oñate’s opinions are marked by an even starker emphasis on individual rights, property and freedom than those of his colleagues working in major cities on the other side of the Atlantic. Second, his analysis is not only the reflection of his extraordinary knowledge of centuries of scholastic thinking about the morality of the market, but also of his practical experience in the New World.

Purchaser’s right to repair medical equipment under COVID-19 pandemic

The article discusses certain aspects of the buyers rights to repair medical equipment during and after the expiration of the warranty period. Today, increasingly, some manufacturers limit the possibility of independent repairs by unreasonably highly integrating parts, technically unjustified complication of components, creating an artificial scarcity of spare parts in the market, preventing the work of independent service organizations and other controversial marketing strategies. The objectives of the study is to assess the limitations of the buyers rights to repair for the proposal of law enforcement proposals for respecting the balance of interests of the Parties under the Agreement; the elimination of the possibility of distorting civil law principles of conscientiousness and transparency. The tasks are permitted through the formal legal, regulatory, systemic, logical, comparative and theoretical and prognostic methods. According to the results of the work, the conclusions are formulated about the need to adjust the current legislation, including in the scope of manufacturers for the use of software that limits the repair of goods; unreasonably high degree of integration of blocks; failure to submit service documentation, as well as for electronic blocking of diagnostics, maintenance and repair of goods.

Review: All the Water the Law Allows: Las Vegas and Colorado River Politics, by Christian S. Harrison

Review: <i>All the Water the Law Allows: Las Vegas and Colorado River Politics</i>, by Christian S. Harrison

Model-based analysis of the effect of pricing rules and new entrants on the balancing market efficiency. Case study of the Swedish market

Balancing services are essential for the transmission system operator (TSO) to ensure system stability in the event of frequency deviations. The Swedish TSO has largely relied on reservoir hydro power plants to provide these services, including frequency containment reserve (FCR), using a complex cost-based methodology and awarding successful bidders on a pay-as-bid basis. Changing the pricing rule from pay-as-bid to marginal and moving from a cost-based to bid-based market may help diversify the pool of balancing service providers and stave off increasing FCR prices. In this paper, we investigate the economic effect of 1) introducing marginal pricing, 2) the entry of new technologies, wind generation and battery storage into the FCR market, and 3) how much new wind and storage capacity is necessary to counteract a potential system cost increase. For this, we develop an agent-based model of the Swedish FCR market for normal operation (FCR-N) and a reinforcement learning algorithm to emulate possible non-competitive behavior of market participants. We show that, in a current concentrated hydro-dominated market, a change to marginal pricing and freely set bids leads to skyrocketing FCR-N prices. The main driver is strategic behavior, as a result of which agents do not only increase their bid prices but also tend to withhold capacity increasing their profits through artificial scarcity. Furthermore, our results show that marginal pricing along with the entry of new technologies can counteract the rise of system cost and stabilize the market by combating strategic behavior.

Power Oligarchy: The Game of Cartel in Cooking Oil Scarcity

Allegations related to the cartel arise every time Indonesia experiences a shortage of cooking oil. The study aims to discuss the causes of the scarcity of cooking oil in Indonesia. Is it because of Permendagri Number 06 of 2022 or because of a cartel or is it caused by an artificial scarcity made by a syndicate? And whether this cartel and scarcity have anything to do with it. The study used qualitative research. The study uses normative or socio legal by analyzing relevant sources and news related to the scarcity of cooking oil. The results showed that the cause of the scarcity of cooking oil was the highest retail price which was marked by the issuance of Permendagri No. 6 of 2022, the law of one price which causes arbitrage, artificial scarcity by businessman, panic buying among the public, conditional sales and distribution problems. The relationship between the cartel and the scarcity of cooking oil lies in its complex and non-transparent distribution to consumers. The cartel group restrains the widely circulated cooking oil products with HRP because the businessman will lose out automatically if sold at HRP. Therefore, businessman withdraw products from the market and resulting in scarcity.

NFTs and the Art World – What's Real, and What's Not

This Article explores the reality and mythology of NFTs in art law and in the art world by unpacking six myths, misconceptions, and poorly understood truths about NFTs that prevent persons, and particularly art law lawyers, from understanding the role NFTs are playing and could play in the art world and beyond. The Article discusses the legal and financial attributes and potentialities of NFTs for artists, galleries, dealers, investors, museums, and, most especially, for lawyers who advise the players in the art world. The six myths or misconceptions are:-Myth 1: NFTs are artworks.-Myth 2: NFTs create a false artificial scarcity in artworks.-Myth 3: The valuation of NFTs is unlike any rational process of valuation for any other artwork or asset.-Myth 4: Smart Contracts are like regular contracts.-Myth 5: NFTs have created the ability of artists to receive resale royalty rights.-Myth 6: NFTs will allow all artists the chance to make serious money from their art.

Competition for finite resources as coordination mechanism for morphogenesis: An evolutionary algorithm study of digital embryogeny

The standard view of embryogenesis is one of cooperation driven by the cells' shared genetics and evolutionary interests. However, numerous examples from developmental biology and agriculture reveal a surprising amount of competition among body cells, tissues, and organs for both metabolic and informational resources. To explain the existence of such competition we had hypothesized that evolution uses limiting “reservoirs” of resource molecules as a communication medium - a global scratchpad, to enable tissues across the body to coordinate growth. Here, we test this hypothesis via an evolutionary simulation of embryogeny in silico. Genomes encode state transition rules for cells, such as proliferation, differentiation, and resource use, enabling virtual embryos to develop a specific large-scale morphology. An evolutionary algorithm operates over the genomes, with fitness defined as a function of specific morphological requirements for the final embryo shape. We found that not only does such an algorithm rapidly discover rules for cellular behavior that reliably make embryos with specific anatomical properties, but that it discovers the strategy of using finite resources to coordinate development. Given the option of using finite or infinite reservoirs (which determine cells’ ability to carry out specific actions), evolution preferentially uses finite reservoirs, which results in higher fitness and increased consistency (without needing direct selection for morphological invariance). We report aspects of anatomical, physiological/transcriptional, and genomic analysis of evolved virtual embryos that help understand how evolution can use competition among genetically identical subunits within a multicellular body to coordinate reliable, complex morphogenesis. Our results suggest that under some conditions, composite multi-scale systems will promote conflict and artificial scarcity for their components.

Perceived Effects of COVID-19 Pandemic on Food Security in Southeast Nigeria

The present study evaluated the perceived effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on food security in Southeast Nigeria. A multi-stage random technique was used to select 209 households. Data for the study were collected with the aid of a structured questionnaire and were analyzed using descriptive statistics, z-test, food security model, and Tobit regression model. Results showed that the mean household size was 9.6 persons, which indicates a large household size. The percentage rate of food consumption of the households before the Pandemic was higher relative to the COVID-19 event. Again, exorbitant prices of food materials were noticed during the COVID-19 as compared to the period before the Pandemic. About 10.5% of the households met the minimum food requirements as proposed by World Health Organization (WHO), and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) as against the majority of 76.1%. The three dimensions of food security which include availability, accessibility, and utilization were interposed by a number of factors, such as artificial scarcity, and an increase in food prices. Furthermore, social distancing and lockdown imposition were COVID-19 determinants of the food security status of households in the Southeast Nigeria. About 24% of the households were food-secured compared to 76% that were insecured during the Pandemic. Robust and effective food and agricultural policy formulations and implementations were recommended in Southeast Nigeria.