I believe that people want rent seeking to proceed because it creates a continuous demand for superfluous work.
Rent seeking, as the foundation of every modern economy, regardless of politics, is needed, is demanded, by society to create guaranteed existential threat, therefore giving meaning to the collective unconscious.
My evidence?
People actually think they own their job in the world of mass migration for starters. But it goes much deeper.
The advent of AI. When I promote AI as a fantastic labour saving device and how it will mean in the extreme case they will have a job which pays higher than before for less work, I get at best a blank stare or at worst the usual kind of ideologically driven child who cannot have his sweeties resistance.
For this astonishing AI development let's take an extreme case to make the point easier to see. In this AI driven economy all this person does is go to work each day, to press a green button to start production and goes back again before tea to press the red button. And will get paid six figures for it. No questions asked.
Can you imagine it when times get hard there will be strikes because the workers are asked to start the machines at 9am instead of 930?
Sure, the value of land, whose earnings are rent, will take up all the gains. You may do little work now. And the price of your house or the rent youre obliged to pay for exclusive rights to it, will be through the roof. Why? Because that is where the earnings from work and capital investment are the highest.Shhh! De facto earnings only include rent, in the end.
THIS is the devastating effect causing existence to be threatened. It matters little that you don't get to keep most of the six figures for doing almost nothing. Eat your heart out, taxation! Inevitably, when more is sucked out of an economy, in rent, than is produced - or at least that workers are willing to continue to go to work to produce even if all that means is pressing a button twice a day, that economy must be the laws of nature, collapse suddenly. There it is - 'existence, under serious threat right in front of your face. But who will know, while a powerful narratives makes it forbidden to scrutinse authentically.
And this threat, is what people on the whole, need. More than fame, more than fortune. Because it gives meaning in humdrum city lives where connection to the land, ironically, has long been forgone. The city life no longer remembers where it came from.
When I explain this with clarity to 'the children short of sweeties' they say "but what will I do for the rest of the day" .
I say, pray, meditate, raise your family, help the needy for free without a contract. Learn about higher things. Sleep. Hobbies, grow food well and so on and so on.
Could there be more evidence pointing at the root demand for a rent seeking economy - that is an insatiable demand, for work! To satisfy the need like a drug.
I'm not saying a democratic majority of spoiled people are entirely to blame. This is how society has raised them. A pathological society of all politics and belief systems. It is Needed. From ancient times, a primordial need has been set in stone in the psyche of every person born. To create an existential threat of any kind which fits best, to bring meaning to life.
Today, in this modern world, where actual existential threat has been all but overwhelmed, largely by technology and cooperation, why does the sickness, this abuse of drugs, proceed? As I say, the Need for it is in our so called genes. It's like getting hungry, for food. Or addiction to caffeine etc. It must be had, just as much as the energy in the calories in food, must be had. Perhaps more so once there's enough food to go around guaranteed as is the case everywhere today.
This theory, is really that simple. It is still just that, a theory. Do you have a better one? Such as, there's an nasty cabal of wealth and power. Or the devil(created post Christianity to blame the Jews for His death not the Romans to protect them from their own insurrection, which sadly persists systemically 2 thousand years later as another psychic social pathology) is causing us to stumble. What childish, cowardly, simpleton ideas. Escapes!
Rent seeking as a systemic social psychology, bordering on a collective psychopathy, is such a thing. The more this need tends toward a psychopathy, the more intensely it will be adopted by the great masse. It causes inevitable periodic collapse. It creates a huge divide between winners and losers. Winners and losers can quickly and easily switch roles across a generation. No one in particular can be found to blame. No one can see the apocalypse coming every mortgage cycle. It's a perfect story.
How come no one knows about the cause and effect here. It's so massive surely something will be done about it next time? Well, as with any systemic brainwashing, who will know? If parents, schools, unis, philosophers, planet savers...and so on and son...never mention it. It is forbidden knowledge - we who need this thing so badly, know by intuition that it's more than ones reputation, career, friends and family, is worth to mention it. Notice how with only four years since the last financial shock, everyone, particularly the experts, philosophers and professors, have forgotten. Preparing a clean pathway for the next cycle to play out without interference, so beautifully.
Rent seeking, as the foundation of every modern economy, regardless of politics, is needed, is demanded, by society at its root, to create existential threat, therefore giving meaning to the collective unconscious. This story alone is more important to society than everything.
Even Ayn Rand knows not to mention it. That's not to dayI have any more respect to that story than all the other basic children's stories.