Did you know that there was a $13 billion dollar industry based purely around rent seeking in NYC? I'm talking about the taxi industry, where a medallion is required to operate a vehicle for hire that can be flagged down by customers on the street. At 13,237 medallions selling for at least a million dollars each $13 billion is on the small side. The $13 billion is just New York City. The number becomes much larger when taxi medallions from around the country's major metropolitan areas are included.
Many rants against the evils of capital owners are misplaced. But the above article is about an instance where the capital in question is a right for the government to restrict their competitors and nothing else. If politicians want to reform the market they can do a few things:
1. Issue more medallions. Doing this enough over time will slowly reduce the value of the medallion and increase competition. This will improve the situation but the rent seeking will remain.
2. Issue a lot more medallions for a fixed fee covering the cost of regulating the taxi's. This shouldn't be more than a few thousand dollars. Billions of dollars will be lost overnight. Life savings will disappear. Paying off medallion owners some of what they lost through a slight increase in the fees for new medallions could be a compromise.
3. Deregulation. Like two, this could be accompanied by small pay outs to existing holders of medallions. New York City seems to be going in the other direction with their recent proposed large soda ban, so the only way this will happen is if competitors to taxi's such as Uber are able to compete on both price and convenience while working at the disadvantage where they are not allowed to pick up fares on the street.
Unfortunately, it's very unlikely that the public will care more than those who stand to lose their $13 billion dollar investment in government support in the face of reform. It's likely that nothing significant will be done on this issue. Prices will go up for customers, wages will stagnate if not fall for drivers and the profits for medallion owners will remain steady.