Re:AWS to Begin Charging for Public IPv4 Addresses
by DoughnutHole on Friday August 04, 2023 @11:08AM
(#37001056)
> It normally refers to people extracting money for things far beyond their actual value.
That's not what "rent-seeking" means at all.
Rent-seeking is extracting wealth from a system without creating anything. It's a term meant to differentiate profiting via productivity/adding value (eg. manufacturing a better product and outcompeting others) and profiting via extracting value from others without adding anything (eg. buying out all of the manufacturers of a product and leveraging your monopoly position to jack up prices).
Amazon haven't created any value here - they own enough of a stock of a scarce, in-demand resource that they can charge a great deal for it. It's the definition of rent-seeking.
That's not what "rent-seeking" means at all.
Rent-seeking is extracting wealth from a system without creating anything. It's a term meant to differentiate profiting via productivity/adding value (eg. manufacturing a better product and outcompeting others) and profiting via extracting value from others without adding anything (eg. buying out all of the manufacturers of a product and leveraging your monopoly position to jack up prices).
Amazon haven't created any value here - they own enough of a stock of a scarce, in-demand resource that they can charge a great deal for it. It's the definition of rent-seeking.