Market Failure

== List of (possible) market failures ==
Note: this is work-in-progress. This list should not be considered exhaustive, nor do I have the conceptual clarity to make these items totally distinct. My guess is some phenomena could be captured (possibly in part) by multiple of these concept.
* Rent-seeking
* Monopoly power
=== Rent-seeking ===
Definition of this I find difficult. (see note in Book: The Worldly Philosophers | Thought Wiki | Fandom, p. 186). My attempt there was: something that grows your wealth without creating any new wealth/surplus. At best this is purely redistributional? (e.g. hedge fund buying spectrums before the US double auction). If the extraction of rent/increased price lowers consumption of the commodity, it even results in a net decrease of total surplus? (Likely also an increase in inequality?)
If e.g. buying a piece of land in expectation of its value increasing (in theory prob need to add some form of asymmetric or costly info?), a counter argument could be made by arguing that this provides an incentive for the costly information exploration to identify high-value commodities that would otherwise not be 'in the market'? Or maybe even just with asymmetric info without costly exploration, buying a commodity not in the market, sharing your info to become public and then selling it?
Maybe oil exploration is a good example of the costly info? E.g. here Saudi-Arabia and Norway are interesting examples of non-market approaches, and the Netherlands as a mixed state-market approach?
Another interesting example is appreciation resulting from zoning changes. E.g. allowing housing to be built on agricultural land next to a city causing an increase to its value, when anticipating this a speculator can buy the land pre-change and make a profit. The increase is surplus produced by the permit change ideally falls to society? This would be a rare example of a high-revenue tax channel that is non-distortionary? Spectrum allocation is another interesting example I think: no value is added when buying/selling it, and the change in its value accrues to the state by leasing it out for periods of time.
Generally, see the part of the above book from 186-onwards about Henry George about a single massive tax that absorbs all rents.