Guess who walks with cash and profit from this proposal for the Greensboro Performing Arts Center?

http://www.urbanplanet.org/forums/index.php/topic/3155-downtown-greensboro-developments/page__st__580__p__1160672#entry1160672

The News & Record buildings are directly above the pedestrian bridge.

Hat Tip: Ed Cone

"...rent-seeking is an attempt to obtain economic rent

by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur,

rather than by creating new wealth.

...spending money on political lobbying in order to be given a share of wealth

that has already been created.

...People accused of rent seeking typically argue

that they are indeed creating new wealth (or preventing the reduction of old wealth)

by improving quality controls,

guaranteeing that charlatans do not prey on a gullible public,

and preventing bubbles.

Many current studies of rent-seeking focus on efforts

to capture various monopoly privileges stemming from government regulation

of free enterprise competition.

The term itself derives, however,

from the far older practice of appropriating a portion of production

by gaining ownership or control of land.

...the expenditure of resources attempting to enrich oneself

by increasing one's share of a fixed amount of wealth

rather than trying to create wealth.

Since resources are expended but no new wealth is created,

the net effect of rent-seeking is to reduce the sum of social wealth.

Rent-seeking generally implies the extraction of uncompensated value

from others

without making any contribution to productivity.

...a more common example of rent-seeking is political lobbying

to receive a government transfer payment,

or to impose burdensome regulations on one's competitors

in order to increase one's market share.

...such behaviors may result in substantial social losses.

Studies of rent-seeking focus on efforts to capture special monopoly privileges

such as government regulation of free enterprise competition.

The term "monopoly privilege rent-seeking" is an often-used label

for the former type of rent-seeking.

Often-cited examples include a farm lobby that seeks tariff protection

or an entertainment lobby that seeks expansion of the scope of copyright.

It is important to distinguish between profit-seeking and rent-seeking.

Some will try to say that rent-seeking is a creation of wealth.

However, profit-seeking should be understood as the creation of wealth,

while rent-seeking includes the use of the power of the state or government

to distribute wealth between different groups of individuals."

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