For the average layman, when they hear the term “rent” they might well typically associate it with the amount of money that people pay for their monthly rent. When it comes to economic rent seeking, though, the best way to define such, is the extra or excess profit obtained, for example, by the manipulation of the commercial market through governmental favoritism, or the consequence of having substantial market share or the effective control of such, and basically the “gaming” of the system for the exclusive benefit of the entity that incurs the gains from that rent seeking.
As much as people sing the praises of capitalism as well as of competition, it has to be taken into fair account, that a significant portion of those corporations that are most profitable, are corporations that in one form or another, are able to exercise some degree of rent seeking into their business model. That is to say, when multi-billion dollar corporations are somehow able to convince municipalities that by moving to their city, that this will create all sorts of jobs and revenue for that locale – but they also insist, in conjunction, upon receiving in return, massive tax abatement from property taxes and the like, this is a form of rent seeking. So too, corporations that are permitted to buy out their competitors so as to consolidate that business into fewer and fewer players, are typically doing so, not to benefit those that are its customers by thus having better products and better service, but for the most part, so as to reduce competition, or potential competition, so that they can therefore make more money by that rent seeking.
The salient fact that has to be taken into full account, is that many people as well as corporations, prefer to minimize the financial risk that they have to deal with, as much as possible. In other words, people that are trying to make some extra cash on the side, or corporations that have a Board of Directors and stockholders to answer to, desire to do everything that they can do, to reduce the amount of risk to their bottom line, that they have to deal with, while correspondingly trying to find ever more lucrative ways to make the money that their salaries and bonuses are dependent upon, quarter after quarter. This signifies, that no matter how good a given corporation is run, or how solid their product line may so be, that these corporations are always looking for any avenue that will be ever more secure for their revenues, ever more profitable, and they thus will do all that they can do to eliminate or mitigate those things that thus stand in their way of getting as much as they can in the way of that easier money.
So then, the way that we know that rent seeking is on the rise in the 21st century, such as in America, is as clear as day, for we are able to see that the distribution of the wealth within America, is being relentlessly skewed and specifically directed towards the upper 1%, which is why we not only continue to have so many people that stubbornly remain part of our underclass, but also why those of the middle class, find that they are struggling so hard, just to get by, far more frequently.