[TTPrograms]

Staking is not any more rent seeking than mining is. Stakers calculate and propagate valid new states for the chain. I also don't see anything entrenching or perpetual about it.

It's not as though increased mining efficiency provides some net good for the Bitcoin blockchain, e.g. increased transaction throughput. It just provides a profitable edge for the miner. You'd just expect difficulty to increase, not energy usage to decrease. I don't think there's any particular reason to desire this sort of cross-miner competition that produces negligible societal gain.

[ufo]

From one point of view, housing is a service landlords provide to the society. It's still rent though.

[TTPrograms]

The economic concept of "rent-seeking" as it's used now has relatively little to do with rental contracts as they pertain to housing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking

E.g.: "The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a property owner who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The owner has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free."

[DennisP]

Stakers are landlords in the same way that miners are. They have lower expenses, but they also get less revenue.