I wrote a snarky reply to illustrate that your broad and generalizing assertion didn't really hold up.
My use of "rent seeking" is fine, there is other gain to extract than pure monetary profit. One is personal prestige: Being the boss of a big department with a big budget is nice (and well paid, even in the public sector).
An example of a public company, a railway one even, squandering billions on useless prestige projects: Danish State Railways procuring a small run of entirely custom made intercity trains instead of getting something off the shelf. It's a 5 billion DKK project, close to a decade late now. Also, changing governments failed to maintain the signals, so they're utterly rotten, causing delays daily.
My use of "rent seeking" is fine, there is other gain to extract than pure monetary profit. One is personal prestige: Being the boss of a big department with a big budget is nice (and well paid, even in the public sector).
An example of a public company, a railway one even, squandering billions on useless prestige projects: Danish State Railways procuring a small run of entirely custom made intercity trains instead of getting something off the shelf. It's a 5 billion DKK project, close to a decade late now. Also, changing governments failed to maintain the signals, so they're utterly rotten, causing delays daily.