Is there any sector of the economy where private rent-seeking isn't a major component of profits?

No. The payment of the factors of production is always in large part politically determined, so all profits (and all wages, for that matter) are always in large part zero-sum rent seeking.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

In fact, the introduction of renewables drives down the wholesale price of power, in effect creating competitive advantage.

bingo, that's why they've been fighting renewables tooth and nail, first with lies, then obfuscation, and more lies.

it's worked, because so few people are shifting gears on this, and even for those who want to, here in italy the bureaucracy is such a documentary minefield, i heard of someone giving up half way the other day.

meanwhile the friend i recommended to the guy that sorted me, has finished his installation, the company is giving me a cut, and my friend has already found 4 more clients.

the engineer who did mine was so 'on it', nothing fazed him, and he terriered through to the end.

that kind of tenacious competence is as rare as rubies in the dust around here...

there are even ads on tv touting it, but the average consumer is still balking, eve with total financing from the banks, (which my friend did, making the payback period 11 years instead of 7 if he had financed it himself, before all the power he 'creates' is all his.)

when i think about all the hard sell tech used to sell every kind of crap under the sun (sic), it is quite maddening to see such a magnificent opportunity fro Italy to become self-sufficient, or at least much more so, so weakly promoted.

'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty