{
  "id": "rent.income",
  "term": "rent",
  "sense": "income",
  "pos": "noun",
  "status": "review",
  "level": 18,
  "arena": "Emergence",
  "domain": "economics",
  "style": "window",
  "definition": "Income from holding a parameter at a wall rather than from doing work. A change that removes a factory reduces output; a change that removes a toll does not.",
  "folk_gloss": null,
  "emergence": {
    "components": [
      "parameter.condition",
      "wall.range-end",
      "drift.aimless",
      "maintenance.upkeep",
      "window.range",
      "change.process",
      "doing.activity",
      "hold.physical",
      "income.financial",
      "rather.comparative",
      "work.effort"
    ],
    "interaction": "The components together allow sustained extraction of income from the mere maintenance of a parameter at a boundary condition, without productive effort.",
    "novel_properties": [
      "unearned income",
      "persistent extraction without labor",
      "value from constraint maintenance"
    ]
  },
  "examples": [
    {
      "text": "The 2020 U.S. federal spectrum auction yielded $20.7 billion from telecoms leasing bandwidth from the government.",
      "domain": "economics"
    },
    {
      "text": "The Hoover Dam generates power from water pressure held back by its 726-foot-high wall, not from active pumping.",
      "domain": "engineering"
    },
    {
      "text": "In 2019, Venezuela’s hyperinflation rendered rent controls nominal, as landlords held apartments off-market in Caracas.",
      "domain": "institutions"
    }
  ],
  "relations": [
    {
      "id": "chokepoint.bottleneck",
      "type": "medium-for",
      "note": "chokepoint enables rent extraction"
    },
    {
      "id": "maintenance.upkeep",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "rent vs. maintenance effort"
    },
    {
      "id": "work.effort",
      "type": "contrasts-with",
      "note": "rent is not earned by work"
    }
  ],
  "used_by": [],
  "forms": [
    "rent"
  ],
  "closed": false,
  "provenance": {
    "author": "retrofit:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
    "date": "2026-07-29",
    "confidence": 0.8,
    "sources": [
      "Sample/we-already-had-the-words.md"
    ],
    "reconciled": {
      "by": "openrouter:qwen/qwen3-235b-a22b-2507",
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "changed": "factual",
      "note": "Revised definition to align with components and correct conceptual mismatch. Removed self-reference to 'rent', grounded income in effort and constraints. Added missing constitutive concepts."
    },
    "restored": {
      "date": "2026-07-31",
      "from": "Sample/we-already-had-the-words.md",
      "replaced": "Income obtained not by doing work, but by keeping a system parameter within a range using artificial constraints. Unlike work, removing the constraint does not reduce output."
    }
  },
  "canonical": "https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-rent.income"
}