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OK, maybe the Mona Lisa was not a good example. But if somehow Da Vinci had produced a billion copies of the Mona Lisa it would not be nearly as valuable! My other point in that paragraph was that if a country prints more units of currency the value goes down, so scarcity is important to value.

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Scarcity isn't 100% important for value - leverage is. Leverage can be tied to scarcity, but doesn't have to, it all depends on the goods which are being exchanged. Artworks exist just once, coupled with the attributed prestige the value increases. Guns exist a bunch, their price doesn't scale relative to their scarcity. Food is not priced relative to the amount on the market, but to the demand of the consumer. If the demand is high and so is scarcity, the price rises, but if demand is low but scarcity is high, the price stays low. [...]

Modern art reproducers can make copies of the Mona Lisa that experts can't easily distinguish from the original. This kind of replica fraud happens often in the art world. I find it interesting to try to justify the value of the original when it is almost zero cost to have an exact replica of the original. The scarcity is not real, or at least the scarcity of being able to enjoy the intrinsic value of looking at the painting is not real. When you remove that part, the value lies only in being able to verify the authenticity of the work, rather than in its quality as art.

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