More specific foreign words for “rent-seeking”
Do you, like me, cringe at the word "rent-seeking" to express the concept of investing resources to gain transfers of wealth from others? (Forget about Alfred Marshall, isn’t "rent" what you pay for your apartment? And do you really have a consistent definition which delineates "rent-seeking" from "profit-seeking," yet without begging the question?) Here are some more specific concepts, expressed in terms of a single word, taken from a longer list of strange words. How about these?
GRILAGEM Brazilian Portuguese
The practice of putting a live cricket into a box of newly faked documents, until the insect’s excrement makes the paper look convincingly old.
DHURNA Anglo-Indian
Extorting payment from someone by sitting at their front door and staying there without food, threatening violence, until you get paid.
SOKAIYA Japanese
A man with a few shares in several companies who extorts money by threatening to come to the shareholders’ meetings and cause trouble.
If you ever wish to teach rent-seeking to your class, just tell them about sokaiya.