"In San Francisco, you could spend a year or two paying rent through the permit process, " said Rob Black, director of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, a nonprofit trade association.

WSJ: Bid to Ease the Squeeze on Business

Rent-seeking is the process by which businesses seek profits by making investments in the political process.

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Whether you rent in Amsterdam, London or Paris, the process is more ad hoc than reserving a hotel room.

FORBES: Playing the Float

In terms of whether it deterred businesses from settling in Wales, Mr Jones said that a host of other contributory factors, such as local business rates or rent, outweighed the potential impact of the tolls in any decision process.

BBC: Welsh Affairs Select Committee

While drilling in that depth of water was prohibitively expensive a decade ago, it's now easy for a company Triton's size to rent a drillship to find the oil and set up a floating production platform to process it.

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