● rent seeking Spending money in
socially unproductive efforts to acquire,
maintain, or exercise monopoly.
In 1996, the Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) successfully
lobbied the Clinton administration for regulations requiring that the
ethanol (ethyl alcohol) used in motor vehicle fuel be produced from
corn.
Why? Because ADM had a near monopoly on corn-based ethanol
production, so the regulation would increase its gains from monopoly
power.