sure there is ... any centrally allocated system of real or artificially scarce resources based on market dynamics works this way. For instance, radio frequencies, water rights, domain names and ticket scalping. In some municipalities liquor licenses, mobile network providers, broadband, and now marijuana licenses work this way too.

I wouldn't be surprised if banks, cosmetologists and realtors were like this too, but I don't know enough about them.

Not to mention the music industry or really any industry whose business model is enabled by copyright.

More broadly: not just copyright but intellectual-property in general, which is government-granted monopoly protection.

You're right in principle, and I thought about writing the same. But trademarks are IP too, and I have a hard time seeing how this applies to them. I also think copyright is far worse than patents for a few reasons. Firstly, patents do expire, whereas copyright never seem to. Secondly, patents disputes are mostly between businesses, which mean the forces are roughly equal on either side. Copyright disputes are sometimes between businesses, but more often than not, they are between businesses that hold the copyright on one side, and consumers on the other. And in those cases, the balance of power is tilted massively in favor of the right’s holders. Which I am guessing goes a long way to explain why the copyright period keeps getting extended.

many countries grant pharmacists the monopoly of selling drugs and limit the number of pharmacies per area. This kind of system is used across many fields.

Medical school?

Yes. A fixed number of students are accepted, controlled by the AMA.

> Yes. A fixed number of students are accepted, controlled by the AMA.

No. The AMA does not have any control over how many students are accepted to medical school. The AAMC does, and there technically is a cap, but they've been intentionally increasing it steadily for over a decade in order to increase the supply of doctors.

However, even that's irrelevant, because the number of people graduating medical school isn't a bottleneck for the supply of physicians - residency programs are. There are far more doctors than there are residency slots, and the AAMC doesn't control residency positions. So whatever cap they have at this point doesn't affect anything other than the number of people who graduate medical school and end up having to get a job in a different field.

Do you have any idea what limits residency positions? They don't pay like a doctor but they do doctor like stuff. I would think that hospitals would want a lot of them. Sort of like how in science post-docs are hired everywhere because they are just the same as a research scientist, but you can pay them less.

> Do you have any idea what limits residency positions? They don't pay like a doctor but they do doctor like stuff. I would think that hospitals would want a lot of them. Sort of like how in science post-docs are hired everywhere because they are just the same as a research scientist, but you can pay them less.

It's the other way around. Resdiency positions are extraordinary expensive to offer - remember that this is where doctors actually receive their clinical training. Medicare funds them, because otherwise hospitals would have no incentive to offer them (they would lose money on each resident).

Seriously!? We have a quota limit how many people can become doctors?

Yes. This is why there is such intense competition to get into med school.

Dentistry.

Housing as a cartel.