Recently, Elon Musk said he will hand out $1 million dollars a day to a random voter in Pennsylvania (a swing state) who votes Republican. Obviously, there are serious concerns that this is very illegal (vote buying), but nonetheless it is his plan. By doing this in a crucial swing state for both Harris and Trump, Musk hopes that his actions will tip the scales in favor of Trump, who ideally will limit regulations and provide contracts to Elon.
There are two ways I can take this: Elon rent seeking from the government, or individuals rent-seeking from Elon. I find Elon's relationship with the government more interesting, so I will go with that. For the government, if they wanted to hand out rents, there are a few ways they could go about it: they could give it to those who provide the most value to society (which makes us happy), they can use a lottery (which makes us indifferent), or provide to those who lobby the most effectively (which makes us sad). Trump would allocate by this final method, instead of giving it to those who benefit society the most. If the government instead provided rents to the most worthy of them, in the case of SpaceX and its competitors, this may mean giving rent to companies that have the least carbon emissions, or even the closest to sending a mission to Mars. By doing this, there is no negative societal impact on the government giving out rents.
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