If someone is providing a service that generally increases the total wealth (even if they are the primary recipient of that wealth), then it is not rent-seeking

If someone is providing a service that generally increases the total wealth (even if they are the primary recipient of that wealth), then it is not rent-seeking. It’s when someone is _actively trying to extract wealth without adding value_ that we call this rent-seeking behavior. It is often not obvious from the outside which is which, and it does lie on a spectrum. Software is actually a pretty interesting case to inspect rent-seeking, but it’s not easy to pull apart in rent-seeking context (music is another such product). So let’s imagine a reservoir of water, and there is a bridge that everyone must go over to get the water. Now imagine there is a bridge troll that demands 50 gold coins in order for people to pass. This is rent-seeking behavior. Now imagine the same scenario, but the troll built the bridge. This is not rent-seeking per se, it is wealth creation, because now everyone can get to the water source that they could not get to before. However, the troll can still engage in rent-seeking behavior (like preventing anyone else from building a bridge). That doesn’t mean that rent-seeking doesn’t come into play when chasing profits, but the term is definitionally about siphoning of wealth, not its generation, so drawing the line between profit seeking and rent-seeking isn’t really something you can do in practice unless it’s obvious that no wealth creation whatsoever comes from the rent-seeking behavior.