RENT

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But  I  have  been  rash,  1  fear,  in  using  the
word  “  exactly  ”  in  the  last  sentence.  When
we  come  to  ask  what  “  rent  ”  really  does
mean  in  modern  economics  we  very  soon  find
ourselves  in  a  mighty  maze,  not  without  a
plan,  but  conforming  to  two  or  three  overlapping ­
  plans.  The  best  way  to  envisage
it,  for  the  purposes  of  such  a  study  as  is
attempted  in  this  book,  is  to  rely  on  one  plan,
or  at  most  two,  and  ignore  the  rest.
To  the  two  meanings  of  rent  which  will  be
noticed  all  that  has  been  written  in  the
paragraph  above  applies.  The  one  meaning
is  payment  for  any  things  (or  frequently  it  is
limited  to  agents  in  production)  of  which  the
supplies  are  beyond  human  control.  The
other  is  payment  for  the  differential  advantages ­
  between  members  of  any  class  of  such
things,  when  differential  advantages  are
understood  to  refer  to  the  valuable  properties
inherent  in  things  over  and  above  those  which
are  common  to  the  class  to  which  they  belong,
whether  the  differential  advantages  relate
to  land,  persons  or  circumstances.  Nothing
much  turns  on  the  selection  of  the  one  idea
or  the  other.  To  get  rent  in  the  first  sense,
we  have  simply  to  add  on  to  rent  in  the  second
sense  (which  there  is  a  certain  convenience
sometimes  in  calling  “  differential  rent  ”)