Strangling Innovation — When Rent-Seekers and Startups Collide

Rent-seekers are individuals or organizations that have succeeded with existing business models and look to the government and regulators as their first line of defense against innovative competition. They use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants with more innovative business models. They use every argument from public safety to lack of quality or loss of jobs to lobby against the new entrants.  Rent-seekers spend money to increase their share of an existing market instead of creating new products or markets. The key idea is that rent-seeking behavior creates nothing of value.