In the language of the current top comment, rent seeking is looking to increase your own share of the total pie (and implicitly, other people's share less), rather than making the pie bigger. So the "profits" are more about redistributing things into your own pocket through structural advantages (like control of capital or co-opting the state), rather than wealth creation.
The implication is that this is inefficient because the same resources and intelligent people could have been doing productive things that created wealth, like creating startups, rather than e.g. creating financial products that return big bonuses today but blow up a few years down the line, where the state or other people are left holding the can, with no net gain in the system.
The implication is that this is inefficient because the same resources and intelligent people could have been doing productive things that created wealth, like creating startups, rather than e.g. creating financial products that return big bonuses today but blow up a few years down the line, where the state or other people are left holding the can, with no net gain in the system.