Today's Vocab Term

Rent Seeking (per Wikipedia)

A simple definition of rent seeking is spending resources in order to gain by increasing one's share of existing wealth, instead of trying to create wealth. The net effect of rent-seeking is to reduce total social wealth, because resources are spent and no new wealth is created. In a theoretical context, it is important to distinguish rent-seeking from profit-seeking. Profit-seeking in this sense is the creation of wealth, while rent-seeking is the use of social institutions such as the power of government to redistribute wealth among different groups without creating new wealth.[1] In a practical context, income obtained through rent-seeking may of course contribute to profits in the standard, accounting sense of the word.

Since Rent Seekers add nothing to the actual effort required to create wealth, it's not a matter of doing the work, and deriving the great satisfaction of having done something worthwhile - it's all about having the power to buy somebody else's effort and claim it as your own.

And as long as we accept the bullshit view that the world has to be all about purely Darwinian Economics, we perpetuate a climate in which these destructive predatory schemes are not just tolerated, but encouraged and admired.

There is something immoral about the kind of system Rent Seeking engenders - something we feel deep down in our bones.  Which is why every society (eventually) revolts against it.