Competition is a panacea to most economists. So surely expanding markets would enable more competition and in turn benefit us all. But reality hasn't lived up to the theory argues José Miguel Ahumada. Far from eliminating these excess profits or 'rent', neoliberalism expands opportunities for rentierism intrinsically, and this force shapes our lives and freedoms.

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We tend to think of inequality and precariousness as just a monetary problem that can be solved through redistributing income. While that is part of the solution, that view obscures the fact that is not only personal income the issue at stake, but a general trend of society toward multiplying the areas for rent production and exctraction. Think, for example, of Oriana, an Uber worker. Oriana has to pay between 25% and 30% of the income generated to her digital landlord – in return for this rent, she receives only the right to access work.

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Rents for working, rents for her health, rents for services, rents for debt, and so on.

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When she arrives home, she must pay her private landlord a rent that has been systematically increasing for more than a decade while the quality of her home continues to deteriorate. If she gets sick, Oriana knows that drug prices are exorbitant, due to the increasing patent protections. She also knows that services and goods that were once public access, such as education, health, and recreational spaces, are now privately managed, charging rents for the right to access them. With a salary that has been stagnating for three decades, it is increasingly difficult for her to afford her material life, so she resorts to borrowing money from banks, entering into a relation of quasi-servitude by debt as the interest grows.

Oriana’s central problem here is not only her income, but the multitude of rents she must pay in various areas of her economic and social life: rents for working, rents for her health, rents for services, rents for debt, and so on. This opens up a question that has been addressed by several scholars: how has rent-seeking expanded so widely throughout the economy?