Lotta proposed solutions to the patent troll problem in this comment section, and they all have bad unintended consequences. So here's mine:
Institute a new tax on rent-seeking. Tax rent-seekers for close to 100% of the value they extract (basically a version of Georgism generalized to everything, instead of just real estate).
This would require basically a second IRS, and they would occasionally get things wrong and stifle value-producing businesses, but if it was at all effective it would be a net benefit to the economy instead of a net drag on it, and it could easily pull in enough revenue to let us eliminate income tax.
Wikipedia: growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth.
Obviously, we have to also tax people who are free-riding on the social or political manipulations of others--not every real estate owner profiting from a 5x increase in property value was actually involved in NIMBY political actions, and not every patent troll worked toward creating judicial conditions conducive to their trolling.
No, you misunderstood. What do you define as rent-seeking, in a way that can be enforced? Clearly everyone hates patent trolls. But even here it is hard to come up with rules that affect them but not "legitimate investors" or whatever. Yes, everyone wants the evil to be punished. But how are you to decide who they are?
Yes, that's why we need a new 80,000 person agency to work out the details of enforcement.
It's not like it's hard to pick out many, many instances of this. Licensing requirement for hairdressers? Rent-seeking. Blocking the demolition of an abandoned gas station for high-rise construction? Rent-seeking. Longshoremen prohibiting automation of ports? You'd better believe that's a rent-seeking.
Will there be edge cases and mistakes? Of course. But there'll be an incredible economic surplus from which to compensate any such victims, with all the progress enabled by removing the rent-seekers.
Institute a new tax on rent-seeking. Tax rent-seekers for close to 100% of the value they extract (basically a version of Georgism generalized to everything, instead of just real estate).
This would require basically a second IRS, and they would occasionally get things wrong and stifle value-producing businesses, but if it was at all effective it would be a net benefit to the economy instead of a net drag on it, and it could easily pull in enough revenue to let us eliminate income tax.