I agree scarce is not the right word. What I meant is that your ability to sell the oil depends on artificial rules by the government. The ability to sell the p

I agree scarce is not the right word. What I meant is that your ability to sell the oil depends on artificial rules by the government. The ability to sell the product is what's important here, not "having" the product. Having the product just allows you to use it yourself, which in the case of oil and in the case of copyrighted material is mostly useless. (but it's not true that scarcity of oil is only imposed by physics, it's also decided artificially by OPEC)