Capitalism is an economic system first named and characterized by its critics for the way it favored holders of capital, not least of which the way its structure of property rights enabled and rewarded rent-seeking.<p>In this case, saying &quot;this isn&#x27;t capitalism, it&#x27;s rent-seeking&quot; is like saying, as you sail out of the Golden Gate, &quot;this isn&#x27;t the ocean, its salt water.&quot;<p>(That is, its wrong because the thing being described is both the thing it is denied to be and the thing it is proposed to be instead, and the latter is central characteristic of the former.)