Readers of Ideas on Liberty often come across references to the term "rent-seeking." Usually from the context it's plain that it refers to something undesirable, but what exactly is it?

The idea of rent is an old one in economics. In mainstream economics it refers to a payment to the owner of a fixed factor of production over and above its "opportunity cost," that is, what it could fetch in its next most profitable use. In the case of land, for example, any payment to the owner of a particular parcel beyond the cost of, say, clearing and leveling it or for its "permanent and indestructible qualities" was traditionally considered rent.1

There are those, including nineteenth-century social ...

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