Editing Artificial scarcity (section)

=== Advocacy ===
Artificial scarcity is said to be necessary to promote the development of goods or prevent [[source depletion]]. In the example of digital information, it may be inexpensive to copy information almost infinitely, but it may require significant investment to develop the information in the first place. In the example of the [[pharmaceutical industry]], large scale production of most drugs is inexpensive, but developing safe and effective drugs can be  extremely expensive. Typically, drug companies have profit margins that extract much more excess profit than necessary to repay their initial investment. It is argued that this high payoff attracts more investment and labour talent, increasing the pace of [[drug development]]. The expiry of patents works to limit the period of exclusive rights to sell a new drug. After a time of profiting from legally enforced artificial scarcity, the patent expires, and other companies can make generic versions, and compete on price in a free market. {{citation needed|date=April 2018}}