Being told "professional poker doesn't contribute to society."

[Tien]

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I would estimate conservatively that 95% of the economic arguments that start with "stimulate the economy by spending" are complete crock. The fallacy is ignoring the opportunity costs. The money that the poker pro spends would've been spent anyway, by the fish instead of the pro. The problem is that when the poker pro enters the picture, you're using up one more person for no net gain in spending.
Thus, you actually lose one person's worth of spending, instead of spending (and necessarily producing) more. In general, before making fallacious "stimulate spending" argument, it always helps to remember that everything that is spent has to be first produced. If your economic theory increases spending without increasing production, then your theory tries to make something out of nothing. Look up "broken window fallacy" on Wiki for more detailed explanation.

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good point.

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Now, this particular fallacy is called "lumps of labor fallacy". If we erase all those unproductive jobs, then we'll free up a bunch of people for more productive jobs which will now get created. In the end society will win, because the more goods and services get produced, which is going to happen if unproductive jobs are replaced with productive jobs, the more there is to spend.

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You would be correct if society can imaginarily "create" a few million jobs out of thin air overnight. What do you think happened to depressed economies with high unemployment? There AREN'T enough surpless jobs or oppurtunities to replace the millions of jobs that will be loss. Take a look at Detroit city. All the lectures in the world wouldn't be able to solve the problem of tens of thousands of unemployed people.

Jobs that aren't "productive" by YOUR definition comprise of millions of jobs out there that cannot be easily replaced by "productive" jobs overnight.


Regardless of what the jobs are, jobs that don't produce anything by your definitions are necessary to keep people employed. Poker players contribute a lot more to society than homeless bumps.