[fc417fc802]

You are not assuming good faith, nor are you interpreting what I wrote in the most plausible manner.

I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second. My objection stands regardless of the presence or absence of the claim about Steam providing value.

Notice that I took no position on whether or not Steam is rent seeking, instead merely disputing the reasoning that you expressed.

However even if I had taken a position to the contrary, I don't see how the definition you quoted would be at odds with that. I think it is fairly reasonably to see a dominant player with network effects as possessing sufficient economic power to meet the criteria you laid out. For that matter it's quite presumptuous on your part to assume that everyone else is on board with the particular definition that you selected there.

And it goes without saying that I disagree with your latter assertion of factual incorrectness. No dictionary disputes the ability of a business to multitask.

Actually interestingly enough if we use your definition then you can rent seek while simultaneously adding value to the same product just so long as you're also engaging in unreasonable market manipulation to increase your profit in the process. Amusingly my working definition had been somewhat more restrictive.

[throw10920]

> I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second.

I made a single claim with two parts:

1. the value that they provide is tremendous

2. you are not forced to use them

And then my conclusion was: these make them non-rent-seeking by definition.

You intentionally rewrote my argument to change its meaning, you know that you are, and you're continuing to lie about it.

I don't need to argue with you further - I've pointed out that you're fundamentally dishonest to other readers, and that's all I need to do from here on.