> Tesla is pretty much the quintessential example of a rent-seeking company

This seems impossible. How is it doing rent-seeking?

My understanding is they were offering subscription services. I could have misremembered that. I know other makers were considering the same type of thing.

There are only two subscriptions that Tesla offers: FSD and Premium Connectivity.

And since you still have the option to purchase FSD outright, I don't consider the subscription option as rent-seeking.

With Premium Connectivity, the way I see it, it's necessary to actually cover the costs associated with it. For those unaware, Premium Connectivity, you don't get any video/audio streaming services in the car, and the navigation can only use bare maps rather than satellite imagery. Note that these limitations don't apply if you instead tether to a mobile WiFi AP, such as your phone. The $10/month pays for the extra data your car uses on the mobile network, which could be a LOT of data if you watch video streaming while supercharging frequently.

Unless Tesla is getting a sweetheart unlimited data deal from some carrier, there are probably some people that actually cost Tesla money from streaming a ton of video. But someone like me, who drives only ~5 hours/month, I'm probably not using much data from the audio streaming.

There are more. In the US, there's Tesla Electric for home charging at a fixed rate. Then there is the Supercharger membership for non-Tesla owners for a reduced rate per kWh.

Subscription services aren't rent-seeking. Why would subscription services be bad in the way that rent-seeking is?

Look up "rent-seeking".

It is too bad we cannot come up with a better name, so people do not confuse it with everything else we call rent.

Anytime someone is trying to keep their hand in my pocket with continuous payments for something used to be a one time payment rather than offer the same but as a service is rent seeking to me. Am I confused on the definition?

What would be an example of that? Most that I can think of involve a company (cough BMW cough) offering a feature they used to sell outright, for a monthly fee. The fee being much lower than the outright price of that feature. They're still offering something of value, in this case convenience and lower cost (if you don't want it all the time, buying it incrementally may well be cheaper than buying it outright; Tesla FSD comes to mind as a contemporary example).

I think the problem most people have with the BMW trick is that they include the feature physically, but disable it. That does almost smell like rent seeking, but I think it does not quite get there. Manufacturers routinely hold back a bit and don't deliver maximum capability. For reasons like emissions, or longevity, whatever. This isn't much different IMO, if you're not paying anything for it then the fact that they included it anyway is immaterial.

Probably the most common kind of rent everyone thinks of, property rental, is also not rent-seeking. There is value in what is being provided.

To go back to a car analogy, it would be like BMW engaging the brakes on your car and then charging you a fee release them so you could drive (even better, making it legally required to pay the fee in order to drive on public roads). They're not providing any value at all, and then demanding money for it.

Yes, that's not rent-seeking. Rent-seeking is basically collecting money without offering any service or product in return. It does not benefit the economy, in contrary to profit-seeking, which is what Tesla is doing.

The pejorative term, in the economic sense, tends to be reserved for rents obtained by gaming the system, rather than the usual kind that charges for use of property or capital.

Example: a utility company lobbies for a law requiring utilities to charge a junk fee.

Non-example: I charge someone to live in my spare bedroom.

Tesla is offering use of something they built (Superchargers, self-driving software, etc.) in exchange for a fee. They aren't gaming the system to force anyone to pay. You might not like the pricing model, but there's nothing economically wrong with it.