[michaelt]

> If that's what you think matters above all else, would you support a literal mafia group taking a cut if they had started the market in that particular city?

This is called being a "landlord" and it's actually completely legal.

You buy some land, you build a mall, you invite shopkeepers to set up shops and sell to customers visiting the mall, and the shopkeepers give you $$$$ every month, forever. If they ever stop paying, they lose their shops.

Even though it's shopkeepers that draw customers to the mall in the first place, and even though the shopkeepers are covering all the maintenance costs of the mall, you get paid anyway. Because you own the mall.

So if a mafia group created a market, took a cut from every shop, and threw out anyone who wouldn't pay them their cut? That's actually a legitimate business.

[_heimdall]

That doesn't quite hold when talking about a piece if hardware someone can own outright, like a phone. If the mall allowed shop owners to buy the store they'd have to function more like an HOA, collecting dues rather than rent.

That analogy still doesn't quite hold as you legally agree to pay HOA dues when buying the property and agree the property can seized eventually if you don't pay. No such agreement is made between phone owners and Apple, Apple just sells you the thing and puts some of it's functionality behind ongoing fees.

[immibis]

That's the point - the mall doesn't allow shop owners to buy their store. And Google doesn't let you own your phone outright. If they did, they'd have to give up that recurring revenue stream!

[_heimdall]

I don't like the app store model at all, but it's a stretch to call it rent. Google can't repossess your phone simply because you don't buy any apps.

I have heard the rent argument made for property tax and it holds better there. Own your house outright but fall behind on property taxes and the government can take your house and land - now that feels a lot more like rent.

[benreesman]

Analogies between physical commerce and what the Cartel is up to are offensively wrong by 19 orders of magnitude or so.

There is no useful analogy from an idyllic high street with people shopping at leisure to what happens when you give sociopaths unbounded compute and legal carte blanche.

I struggle with this as a meme and I have a more and less charitable theory. My more charitable theory is that people never learned finance seriously. My less charitable theory is that people stand to benefit personally and are indifferent what it costs, as long as someone else pays the cost.

None of these concepts are in the bedrock law of the land: shopping mall, home owner’s association? Which amendment protects HOAs?

It is completely possible to change all of this, and while we should deliberate thoughtfully before making sweeping change, I mistrust anyone who just asserts dubious shit as bedrock laws of nature.

Maybe we’ve got a pretty sickening system composed of dubiously legal and strictly unethical status quos and it’s time to make some changes at arbitrary effort and cost.

[benreesman]

I’d contend that the term “rentier” is more general and basically all economics from Smith and Ricardo up to Art Laffer was no big lobby for extractive rent seeking.

Profit margins and low-friction competition go hand in hand, if one endorses the one without demanding the other?

I’ll show you a pretty small-minded person with distressingly little empathy.