● 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.