It’s so transparently and frequently stated outright, that building companies geared around achieving that has become the norm: it is the fundamental business-model of _every_ _single_ unicorn startup, or the company that buys them. Launch, squeeze out competitors by relying on VC money, capture the market, and become the sole dominant force in that market and use your position to then pull up the ladder behind you and cement your position. Uber and Facebook are prime examples of this.
> capture the market, and become the sole dominant force in that market and use your position to then pull up the ladder behind you and cement your position
This is worth discussing in detail. Becoming dominant by providing a better thing, or investing more capital, is not tilting the playing field, it's winning the game. Getting government protected monopolies, special tax write-offs, subsidies, exclusive grants is. Uber and Facebook are not anticompetitive just because they are dominant, they are anticompetitive to the extent that they specifically use their dominance to influence politics.
Both perfectly competitive markets and monopolistic markets are part of the broad term capitalism.
Capital consolidates over time and seeks to influence policy-makers to create anti-competitive regulations.
Every single time.
And no doubt there are a bunch of other definitions that aren't so popular, so the parent commenter could even be using one of those. It might even be his own pet definition that he just made up on the spot right now. The author always gets to choose what a word means, so if something seems off "It isn't" isn't a logical retort. You first need to clarify what the author intended the word to mean.
This is an absolutely insane take if you want to be taken seriously in a conversation. Making up definitions on the spot and "getting to choose what a word means" is deliberately acting in bad faith.
Rule #1 of logical debate is to agree on definitions, otherwise you're just yelling past each other.
Besides, what's the other option, rent seeking is socialism? A barter system?
Rent seeking is an Econ 101 example of market inefficiency.
> what's the other option, rent seeking is socialism?
Rent seeking is rent seeking. It is a form of corruption, via regulatory capture. It is a way in which any political system can fail, not limited to an ideology like "socialism" or "capitalism".
