An extremely low quality, low effort meme comment more appropriate for reddit, but I'll respond earnestly in any case.

It's not rent seeking, which should be clear because the premium domains have a fixed price schedule that is far lower than what domain scalpers would charge, instead of a variable charge based on what they think they could get away with. Even at $850/yr, you can probably renew premium domains for multiple human lifespans before you end up paying as much as the scalpers might ask for certain domains. Instead of rent seeking, it is priced such that scalpers can't afford to squat on thousands of common word/phrase domains.

The comment deserved half the effort I put into it, and this one deserves a quarter of the effort I’m putting into it.

No one forces anyone to pay a domain squatter. This is literally a “problem” that only exists in people’s heads.

And no one forces anyone to buy a .dev domain. So what's the issue?

Now you get it.

The same premium domains are still squatted and sold for thousands. Absolutely nothing changed for the end users, but now Google takes a piece of the cake. Admit it.