>Besides, it’s so funny when people use “rent seeking” as a pejorative
"People" including anybody from Marx to the left, all the way to Friendman and Hayek to the right, including Adam Smith...
Sorry, rent-seeking is milking assets without producing value (or with only minimal investment/maintainance costs). It's the opposite of a functional market.
>Like, yes, the reason my landlord bought this house for a lot of capital up front was that they believed it would be profitable rent it for much smaller amounts for a long time. What, am I supposed to feel entitled to use the house for free?
No, you're supposed to not want an economy where people don't mouch off of standing assets, but actually contribute to making value (and products and progress and stuff).
Rent-seeking 101: "Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, and potential national decline."
The Apple ecosystem is not the App Store. They make money off the sales of physical products and their own services like iCloud.
Making money off of the App Store is pure rent seeking. It's maintainance and (very infrequent) improvement costs (negliblible compared to its profit) don't make it any less so. Heck, actual rented properties like houses also incur some maintainances costs on the owner.
"People" including anybody from Marx to the left, all the way to Friendman and Hayek to the right, including Adam Smith...
Sorry, rent-seeking is milking assets without producing value (or with only minimal investment/maintainance costs). It's the opposite of a functional market.
>Like, yes, the reason my landlord bought this house for a lot of capital up front was that they believed it would be profitable rent it for much smaller amounts for a long time. What, am I supposed to feel entitled to use the house for free?
No, you're supposed to not want an economy where people don't mouch off of standing assets, but actually contribute to making value (and products and progress and stuff).
Rent-seeking 101: "Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality, and potential national decline."