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JC pontificates about technology
An occasional series.
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Rent-seeking is the Marxist (ooh! saucy!) term when a fellow (a “rentier”) monopolises access to property (including, for modern readings, intellectual property) and gouging profits out of it.
It comes in many guises:
- Physical property — you know, literal rent-seeking
- Intellectual property — Rather than using the fruits of your blood, toil, tears and sweat you use antediluvian[1] intellectual property rules to gouge everyone else. In this way Mick Jagger and Keith Richards can extract millions over 60 years from 15 minutes of work — in Richards’ case, while he was asleep — composing Satisfaction.
- Franchising: Taking an idea or a business model someone else has invented — McDonald’s is the best example — and paying them a franchise fee to operate it. Here is double rent-seeking: the franchisee pays the franchisor, and the customer pays the franchisee.
- Software as a service: The simple answer to the question why is reg tech so disappointing? — is that tech businesses can’t make money if all they get paid for is writing software. This would be like Mick Jagger only getting paid for fifteen minutes’ work — where is the logic, or the justice in that?
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