Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by davidf18 3279 days ago
In microeconomics is is called market inefficiency or market failure caused by special interests who influence passing laws. The terms are market inefficiency or market failure.
1 comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

Pick up a microeconomics book and it will explain. In microeconomics market inefficiencies or market failures have 3 causes: 1) rent-seeking, 2) negative externalities, 3) information asymmetry.

As I explained somewhere else in this post, Economist David Ricardo first discussed this problem of rent-seeking about 200 years ago. In this case, the wealthy landlords work to pass laws that give them wealth paid for by society or in this case renters.

David Ricardo first discussed rent-seeking with the Corn Laws of Britain which had a tariff on all grains which increased the wealth of landowners at the cost of other members of society.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo#Protectionism