Rent seeking is a term used to describe the practice of individuals or companies seeking to increase their wealth or status through manipulation of the economic system, rather than through productive activities such as innovation or investment. Synonyms for rent seeking include rent extraction, unearned income, economic rent, and profit seeking. Other related terms include crony capitalism, rentier capitalism, and regulatory capture, which refer to various forms of rent seeking in which individuals or businesses use political power to gain an advantage over competitors or to shape economic policy to their own benefit. Regardless of the term used, rent seeking represents a distortion of free markets and is generally viewed as harmful to economic growth and prosperity.