You're just redefining "monopoly" to make some ill defined emotional argument.
> Rent-seeking is the activity by which people try to gain more economic rent; that is, they are trying to gain something without doing anything in return. Those who own a second house and rent it out are actually doing two things: they are hiring out a house, which is not rent, properly speaking. And they are extracting rent for access to the land, which is economic rent. Building a house and maintaining it is a productive use of capital, and hiring it out is not rent-seeking. Owning land and renting out it is, definitionally, rent-seeking (unless one were to only charge as much rent for the land as the costs of keeping the land).
No it isn't. You're doing lots of handwaving about semantics but you still haven't actually explained what rent-seeking activity these people engage in when they hire out their house-and-land to someone else.
>As it turns out, if you and, say, 1 million others owned all the water in your country, you would in fact be part of the group that has monopolised control of water.
Untrue.
> You could then charge whatever you want to those who do not own the water, given they need it for life.
Also false.
> This would be rent-seeking, as the amount you charge could far exceed your marginal costs of production. Water is actually a form of economic land, it just happens to be in great abundance and is slippery enough to be difficult to monopolise.
That is not what rent-seeking means, but at least we have gotten to the point where you agree that ownership of land is not fundamentally different from ownership of other assets in this regard.
> Rent-seeking is the activity by which people try to gain more economic rent; that is, they are trying to gain something without doing anything in return. Those who own a second house and rent it out are actually doing two things: they are hiring out a house, which is not rent, properly speaking. And they are extracting rent for access to the land, which is economic rent. Building a house and maintaining it is a productive use of capital, and hiring it out is not rent-seeking. Owning land and renting out it is, definitionally, rent-seeking (unless one were to only charge as much rent for the land as the costs of keeping the land).
No it isn't. You're doing lots of handwaving about semantics but you still haven't actually explained what rent-seeking activity these people engage in when they hire out their house-and-land to someone else.
>As it turns out, if you and, say, 1 million others owned all the water in your country, you would in fact be part of the group that has monopolised control of water.
Untrue.
> You could then charge whatever you want to those who do not own the water, given they need it for life.
Also false.
> This would be rent-seeking, as the amount you charge could far exceed your marginal costs of production. Water is actually a form of economic land, it just happens to be in great abundance and is slippery enough to be difficult to monopolise.
That is not what rent-seeking means, but at least we have gotten to the point where you agree that ownership of land is not fundamentally different from ownership of other assets in this regard.
> Ricardo's Law of Rent does explain this quite clearly. You can see an introduction here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent
It actually doesn't at all.