SaaS companies are quite literally charging rent for the use of software. Presumably that software does something of value, so they call it a "service" so people can feel like they're getting something for their money.
> by charging rent to everyone who wishes to grow value on their land.
That goes beyond rent-seeking into feudalism.
Rent seeking is running an application as a service that could just be a tool you pay once for, and instead have to pay for monthly. Charging people rent for access to a commons in which they provide all of the value is digital serfdom.
> Rent seeking is by definition unproductive economic behavior.
While I am inclined to agree with you, I do see benefits to the renting model. Basically any thing in the cloud is paying towards "rent seeking" model and it has enough benefits for many people that its worthwhile.
> “Rent seeking” is a term of art that means a specific thing
Right, and specifically in this context, it refers to the act of charging money from software in small continuing installments as opposed to charging money in one up-front installment (which might be called "buying").
In your earlier message you equated "rent-seeking" with "charging money for software". My point is that not all ways of charging money for software are rent-seeking.
Not sure why this is being downvoted, it's the truth.
Rent seeking is a disease that stifles progress. I don't understand how the same people who rail against overly aggressive patent, DRM, and copyright protections can justify supporting rent seeking in the physical world.
> 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.
> They’re just charging exorbitant fees to a customer base with no alternatives.
The term for that is “monopoly rent”, it is a subtype of economic rents (which are distinct from, but overlap, “rents” of goods or services for a finite time as distinct from sales.)
Actions taken in pursuit of economic rents are called “rent-seeking”.
The "reciprocal contribution of productivity" provided by the Warp developers is increased functionality of the software.
You can argue that you'd rather pay once for a particular version of the software (I would), or that you don't want to pay for a terminal emulator in the first place (I don't either), or that the Warp devs could stop improving the software in the future (and they could), but "rent-seeking" is still an incorrect description of their business model, and is only used by people who have an agenda trying to slander Warp for some reason.
>People are said to seek rents when they try to obtain benefits for themselves through the political arena. They typically do so by getting a subsidy for a good they produce or for being in a particular class of people, by getting a tariff on a good they produce, or by getting a special regulation that hampers their competitors.
You may not like the subscription business model, but it isn't rent seeking. Monthly payment != rent seeking.
> Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity.
I think the rent seeking comment was about removing the option for (free) Dropbox sync and only supporting the subscription-based plan. They are asking for more money for less product.
> "Rent seeking [...] is an economic concept that occurs when an entity seeks to gain added wealth without any reciprocal contribution of productivity."
But implicit in "reciprocal contribution of productivity" is "compared to what." After having installed a barrier across a river, productivity increases by charging a fee and lifting that barrier. In that same vein, Warp spending extra development effort to block continued use of something you've already paid for and downloaded to your machine unless you keep giving them money is textbook rent-seeking UNLESS there's some value they're adding by doing so. Admittedly I should have referenced that value rather than their costs, but in practice the two are related because organizations aren't inclined to incur costs without adding value somewhere.
> and is only used by people who have an agenda trying to slander Warp for some reason
That seems like an unnecessary ad hominem. I don't even particularly care that they are rent-seeking. I just don't want to see that term redefined so far that we have to come up with some other name to refer to the same bloody concept, and especially not for the purpose of needlessly bolstering the profits of artificial SAAS. We're all adults here, and anyone who cares is presumably capable of making a proper argument for why rent-seeking is acceptable here rather than trying to redefine the word to brush their payment model under the rug.
"I think the parent and others that dislike rent-seeking"
Jesus fuck I just wish people would stop throwing that word around trying to sound like economists when they obviously have no idea what it even means. Renting out real estate is not rent seeking.
You are really just trying to get to rent-seeking behavior provides little value. My argument is that a lot of tech companies are providing rent-seeking behavior at a huge scale - and if you work for one of those companies in which you are deriving your income from that very behavior - how can you be so high and mighty about a small time landlord deriving small money from rent-seeking behavior except for, when of course, it hurts your own pocket.
What, people charging money for software? How is that "rent seeking" and why does it need to die?
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