The rent seeking theory is the most powerful explanation of the failure of government and of the lawyer profession.

For some reason, this greatest theory of government failure is not well covered in Economics classes in high school and college.

The rent is not a payment for an apartment. It is a payment of crops to a lord in Medieval times, to prevent him from killing the farmer. It is an organized crime, mob extortion payment. In return, the farmer got nothing, not even protection from the Vikings. It is the Medieval definition of rent, from Adam Smith's, wages, profit, and rent, in the Wealth of Nations.

To understand it, one should review its opposite, the profit. A person gets training, practices, and provides good haircuts. He cuts your hair in a skillful, rapid manner. You pay $20. You get the value of a good, quick haircut. She gets the value of $20. That amount is an opinion of customers of the value, and is the real value of the haircut. Everyone comes out ahead. So the rent payment for an apartment is really a profit. You pay $1000, and get the great skill and value that went into the production of good shelter.

In the modern rent, government collects taxes. As in Medieval times, it is done with a threat of violence. Fail to pay taxes, a man with a gun will come around and help you pay. He may then kidnap you, and put you in a metal cage for several years if you refuse to pay your taxes.

Then, the government gives that money to a favored special interest, and the taxpayer gets nothing of value for his tax payment. The protection of the police has value, and is a profit, not rent. Public education, when successful, has value, and is a profit. A road used by many to get to work is a profit.

The rent is even more toxic than the loss of tax dollars and getting nothing in return. It deters productive activity by others. An oil company spends $billion searching for oil in a nasty place. Its executives are killed. It takes a long time. It makes a profit of $100 million by earning it the hard way.

Another oil company hires a lobbyist for $1 million. He gets legislation granting it a subsidy worth $100 million in tax dollars. The first oil company sees that. It feels stupid for earning a profit the hard way. It stops making the effort and expenses of looking for oil. It hires a lobbyist too to engage in rent seeking. It get $100 million in tax money with little effort, risk or expense. The IMF has recognized this scheme as an important factor in income inequality. The poor do not hire lobbyists to send tax dollars their way.

Because, of the violent method of collecting taxes, rent seeking should be criminalized as a theft of tax money. It is variation of armed robbery. When you see pointless, slow, stupid, unproductive government procedure, you are looking at criminal rent seeking, not stupidity. A man with a gun should visit the thieving government worker, and put them in prison.

This theory can get mathematical. This is a nice place to start to survey the subject.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking