Rent-seeking: Difference between revisions

===[[Legal eagle]]s as rent-seekers===

Rent-seeking is at the heart of the [[agency problem]]. An [[agent]] seeks to advance her [[principal]]’s interests but, above all, she wants to ''remain'' and agent, so she can be ''paid''. If her principal’s best interests are served by ''doing away with her agency'', you can be sure she will struggle to voice this proposition to her client.

Take the [[contract negotiation]] process: it features a bunch of [[Stakeholder|stakeholders]] who ''like'' being involved in it, who want to ''stay'' involved in it, even though, by the lights of the new model, they don’t add any value. ''Their primary purpose is to extract rent''. They have structured themselves into the architecture of their organisations and the market. They don’t ''want'' any “solution” which prevents them continuing to extract rent. It is the agency problem, ''par excellence''.

This is what is so interesting about [[OneNDA]]. It may be small and seemingly insignificant in its subject matter, but it strikes the [[rent extraction]] problem at its root. Rather than changing the mode of “service delivery” (for which, read, “''mode of rent extraction''”) or automating, accelerating ''or otherwise making more efficient'' the process of extracting rent, [[OneNDA]] banishes rent altogether. Business owners can fill out a form, and sign it, by themselves. ''No agents required''.

 

There has been much [[thought leader]]ship on the subject of reforming contracting processes, but all of it takes as read that some rent extraction must take place. The OneNDA is different. The forces of rent extraction are deep, and persistent, and powerful, and do not expect them to lay down in front of a shepherd-boy with a sling the way Goliath did.

 

===[[Legaltech]] as a rent-extraction machine===

We talk about this elsewhere, but herein is the fundamental ''problem'' with [[legaltech]]. {{legaltech as rent-seeking}}