[dahart]

Which country are you referring to? You will find a lot of hope if you study a little history and see how this has always been the case. I would guess that in terms of rent seeking and of hustle and useless products things are improving and much better than they used to be. It’s too easy to forget the vast array of useless and even harmful crap people have been selling for centuries if you didn’t live through it and/or don’t know about it. How many civilizations in history had despotic kings that controlled all housing and income, and nobody was allowed to earn their own money? The existence of someone making a decent living on products you don’t appreciate isn’t evidence of rent seeking, it’s evidence that we have more freedom than ever before, and that people have a wide range of tastes and the ability to spend a few bucks on little things they enjoy or save them small amounts of time, no?