Comment by gfaster
2 days ago
Investment is generally considered profit-seeking behavior (i.e. not rent-seeking). Building an apartment and renting it out is clearly profit-seeking behavior, but if you were continuing to rent it out doing the bare minimum to keep it from falling over 40 years later, that would be pretty clearly rent-seeking.
From this, we can conclude that there must be some point after an investment is made where continuing to benefit from it transitions to rent-seeking behavior.
Would holding some stock 40 year after buying it for dividend also be rent-seeking?
Would rebuilding the apartment every so often straighten you back to profit-seeking?
Rent-seeking is just a meaningless insult if framed like that, it highlights no economically net-negative behaviour.