Mega-rentiers disguise their rents as profits, a practice akin to profit-washing.

Evidence

Naturally, oil companies have attempted to legitimise their loot by presenting it as capitalist profit, exaggerating the extent to which their returns are a reward to investments in smart, low-cost drilling technology without which, it is true, the extracted oil might not be competitive with oil extracted by competing oil producers. The same is true of real estate development where ground rent overshadows any profit from innovative architecture. Or with privatised electricity or water utilities whose returns are mostly due to rents the political class has allocated to them. What all these mega-rentiers have in common is a strong motive to legitimise their rents by disguising them as profits – something akin to profit-washing their rents. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 471

Categorization

• SEED: ‘Profit-washing’ is a coinage worth a whole essay: how oil, real estate, utilities, and tech all launder unearned rents into the morally honored category of entrepreneurial profit.
• XREF: Parallels the reader’s platform-capitalism critique — ‘profit-washing’ is a reusable lens for why platform rent extraction is so hard to name. — connects to: The defining shift to technofeudalism is rent defeating profit. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 458; Market competition erodes profits but increases rents. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 468; Rent has replaced profit as the driving force of the economy. — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 504 (+1 more)
• CANDY: ‘Profit-washing’ is a memorable, tweetable neologism.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism, 471

Broader Connections

• The defining difference between rent and profit is vulnerability to market competition. #corroborates (0.82) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 467
• Market competition erodes profits but increases rents. #expands (0.78) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 468
• Rent has replaced profit as the driving force of the economy. #corroborates (0.75) — Yanis Varoufakis, Technofeudalism, 504