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Yes, but the point is that rent seeking profits come from things which don’t contribute to economic productivity, which is the accusation being discussed. Havin
by tshaddox 1y ago
Yes, but the point is that rent seeking profits come from things which don’t contribute to economic productivity, which is the accusation being discussed. Having non-zero costs doesn’t imply that you’re not rent seeking.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoSo then what is the cutoff and who gets to decide it? I doubt anything has literally perfectly zero contribution.
- 7bit 1y agoThe market does. So competitors and demand. The problem is that you have really only little competitors on the market. Eg. Microsoft 365 namely being the one that has outgrown any competitors that can seriously threaten them. They can dictate the prices and they do it willy-nilly and there is no-one that forces them to be cheaper.
- MichaelZuo 1y agoThe market doesn’t write comments on HN… clearly another entity must be typing out readable comments.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoI know what rent seeking is. That is why it is wrong to claim any salary/profit above operating costs are rent seeking.
- tshaddox 1y agoI didn’t claim that and neither did the commenter before me. The commenter implied that, because the operation has non-zero costs, it must not be rent seeking. I offered a correction.