Editing Artificial scarcity (section)

==== Left-wing ====
{{see also|Post-scarcity economy}}
[[Social liberalism|Social liberals]], [[Socialism|socialists]] and [[Anarchism|anarchists]] argue that artificial scarcity is beneficial for the owner, but unfavourable towards the consumer, as it enables the owner to capitalise off ideas and products that are otherwise not property in the physical sense.

Socialists extend their argument to include "socially wasteful production" such as the production of goods which are seen as "status" goods (e.g. diamonds or expensive cars). This sort of production leads to a situation of artificial scarcity of socially useful goods because a large part of society's resources are being diverted to the production of these goods. For example, capitalism has led to the growth of money-based activities like banking-retailing services, remedial measures to deal with [[trade union]] issues, and other such activities to protect capitalism such as weapons research and the development of security firms; socialists argue that the allocation of resources to these activities is not socially useful.<ref name=worldsocialism/>

Some socialists argue that not only artificial scarcity but even the doctrine of scarcity itself is a creation of the capitalist system because any kind of property was considered a burden for the nomadic lifestyle when civilisation was in the [[hunter-gatherer]] stage.<ref name=worldsocialism/> Along with some [[free-market]] libertarians and anarchists, they will argue for [[Sharing economy|sharing economies]] and [[Post-scarcity economy|post-scarcity economics]], both questioning the scarcity of physical and intellectual goods as currently imposed by artificial cultural, bureaucratic, or economic constraints.