I was looking for a certain textbook for my class and then I saw that the place I normally go was out. How can that be? It’s not a physical thing you’re giving me, it’s 1s and 0s. I sure hope there’s a way I can blame the capitalists for this.
Does this one count as artificial scarcity? Time to sail the seven seas… Arrr
It’s artificial scarcity. There’s no reason for it to be out of stock. As you said, it’s just a file on their servers, they’re just preventing you from having access to it. I think it might be time to visit libgen.
Libraries do this as part of their licensing agreements for digital copies (they only have so many uses, too, the idea being that physical books don’t last forever, either, so the library has to buy then again). Are you trying to buy it or borrow it?
Libgen, pdfdrive or zlibrary are always stocked!
Of course, artificial scarcity. Most likely wherever you wanted to buy it don’t have a licence to generate additional copies, are just allowed to sell some amount. Alternatively it can be even lower blow, abc of speculation, create demand (for example by bribing schools/teachers/boards/minister to require their product as official/recommended textbook), and then at some point withdraw it from sale and put it after a time with higher prices.
It works as good with physical and digital goods, though the second one require more consumerist conditioning of population.
