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.
