The reason why our economy is so stagnant and fragile is because #rentseeking is extracting so much of our productivity that end users are sacrificing their futures to pay the demands of rentseekers today, just to stay alive and viable.

Something has to give. Savings have plummeted, debt has ballooned, essential costs of living have skyrocketed, due to the rapacious avarice of the #ownership class, the neo #aristocracy.

People are now commonly paying over 50% of their wages in housing costs. …

@wyatt_h_knott It's the ultimate expression of "the ownership society". #Ownership is a license to print money via #rentseeking.

When you own everything, you can charge for everything, and the only real competition you have is other rentseekers who are looking to maximize their extraction rates.

It's why gullible right wing voters view #immigration as competition, and not as cooperation.

You will own nothing, and the #aristocracy will be happy.

#neoliberalism #neofeudalism

🤡 Oh, the tragedy! The rent-seeking overlords are clutching their pearls as their empire of inefficiency crumbles under the weight of AI making dinner reservations. 🍽️ Who knew an algorithm could be the grim reaper for overpriced mediocrity? 📉
https://geohot.github.io//blog/jekyll/update/2026/02/26/the-last-gasps-of-the-rent-seeking-class.html #rentseeking #AIinnovation #dinnerreservations #overpricedmediocrity #techdisruption #HackerNews #ngated
The Last Gasps of the Rent Seeking Class

Over the past fifty years, the U.S. economy built a giant rent-extraction layer on top of human limitations: things take time, patience runs out, brand familiarity substitutes for diligence, and most people are willing to accept a bad price to avoid more clicks. Trillions of dollars of enterprise value depended on those constraints persisting. – Citrini Research

the singularity is nearer
The Last Gasps of the Rent Seeking Class

Over the past fifty years, the U.S. economy built a giant rent-extraction layer on top of human limitations: things take time, patience runs out, brand familiarity substitutes for diligence, and most people are willing to accept a bad price to avoid more clicks. Trillions of dollars of enterprise value depended on those constraints persisting. – Citrini Research

the singularity is nearer
@sheislaurence I'm sorry to hear that. I think the Hotmail ship sailed a long time ago I'm afraid. I was with Fastmail for many years but they are now *slightly* #rentseeking and #enshittified so I tolerate GMail as an OAuth2 provider and host business email somewhere else.

' You'll find buildings like this all over the place. A building like this could get filled if the goal was higher occupancy rates, but that's not the primary goal.

The system isn't collapsing, it's financializing, and that changes how the market behaves; it can make it seem nonsensical from the perspective of the renter because none of the goals are really for the renter. '

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9L12HUuI40

#urbanism #housing #rentseeking #PoliticalEconomy #LandValueTax #LVT #Economics #monopoly

Why Half Empty Apartments Are Still So Expensive

YouTube

@Misofist that is by design!

  • Because the people behind #ValueRemoving & #RentSeeking proprietary tech like #HEVC want to shaft consumers and manufacturers for #licensing money, because that's how their business ROI's itself!

  • I just wished #AV1 would have feature parity in that regard…

As usual great work from both #7AM podcast [Solstice Media]

Beer, gas and capital gains tax
https://podcastaddict.com/7am/episode/218143647 via @PodcastAddict

and the Australia Institute

https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/tax-beer-drinkers-vs-gas-companies/

As the father of both a brewer and a winemaker I can relate to the analogy....

#rentseeking #kleptocracy #economics #auspol

7am - Covid-level crisis? How Australia ignored fuel warnings

Listen to 7am - Covid-level crisis? How Australia ignored fuel warnings by Solstice Media on Podcast Addict. John Blackburn spent four decades in the Air Force, rising to Deputy Chief. For more than decade he’s been warning that Australia is too reliant on imported fuel, too light on reserves, and too exposed if a global crisis – just like this one – disrupts supply. Now, as more than hundred servos around the country run dry and a Trump ultimatum looms, threatening to m

Podcast Addict
I know the business model for tech companies is #RentSeeking middle-men, but do you have to middle-man your own applications? Stop making me do everything in a browser tab or #msteam, give me different windows and big obvious control ribbons!
#Microsoft #computers #enshittification #nztwits