• General_Effort@lemmy.world
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    3 hours ago

    Are you really conflating people who make their living based upon their acting skills and likeness with landlords?

    No. I am talking about rent-seeking.

    Rent-seeking is the act of growing one’s existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth.[1] Rent-seeking activities have negative effects on the rest of society. They result in reduced economic efficiency through misallocation of resources, stifled competition, reduced wealth creation, lost government revenue, heightened income inequality,[2][3] risk of growing corruption and cronyism, decreased public trust in institutions, and potential national decline.

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

    You could argue to what a degree landlords or Elon Musk are engaged in rent-seeking. Likeness rights are a clear example, though.

    Imagine in the near future. Some famous person licenses their likeness for a show, game, movie. Maybe the producer hires an unknown actor that is then digitally altered into the famous person, like a more advanced version of Gollum. Or maybe the VFX artists can do it on their own. These guys work. The famous person does nothing. They might be dead, while the rights-owners still collect license fees.