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.

[Mr. Ratface]

tell him hes gay

[mittman84]

Haven't read replies yet, but as a poker pro you don't contribute to society (by playing poker). I was a "pro" (lol) for 3 years in college and love poker, but am fully aware playing poker does not contribute to society. How does society work? People provide goods and services to each other. If that wasn't the case we would all still be living in caves. You go to work to provide a good or service to others for a fee, then use that fee to buy goods and services created by others, and the cycle continues which results in all the goods and services we have in this world now. How can you say playing poker adds anything to this? Almost every profession I can think of contributes to society, people need someone to pick up their garbage, people to entertain them, take their order at the fast food joint, build their house, and everything else. Sitting in your room playing poker does nothing to contribute to this.

[disjunction]

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I am able to think about these issues particularly clearly, more so than lots of other people in my field, because I am a gambler. So if poker players don't contribute anything, neither do academic theorists.

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i'm pretty sure they teach courses in logic at cornell. you might want to look into that.

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So you don't understand the meaning of this sentence or are you deliberately dense?

Be careful stinkypete, it might require a little thing called INFERENCE. I don't know if your deductive logic capabilities can handle it.

[mittman84]

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If you live in America don't you pay a hefty amount of taxes?

Don't taxes contribute to society?


Contributin, to society is so relative it cannot be argued. Thousands of job descriptions out there don't "contribute" to society but there are no social stigmas attached to it.

If you were a VP for a tabacco / alcohol company people wouldn't say anything about "contribution".

If you owned a casino no one would really cough down your neck about "contribution".

If you are a salesman for some useless medical drug / pill that doesn't help people do anything would people give you grief about not "contributing"?

No.

Next time someone asks you that question, just say you pay a lot in taxes and that you are helping paying their kids to go to elementary / highschool as well as helping build roads and pay salaries for civil servants and if they don't think that is contribution they can go screw themselves.

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Good point. What about countries where professional poker players don't pay taxes?

[/ QUOTE ]Not a good point at all, they all contribute to society, they are all things society demands (or else they wouldn't exist). Society isn't the moral police, society isn't all good, casino owners and tobacco sales provide something demanded by our society, thus are contributing to it. On the other hand there is no question those things do not contribute to the greater good. Society decides there is a need for gambling, tobacco, and alcohol, there is no arguing this.

[Torello]

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Professional video gamers don't contribute to society either.

[/ QUOTE ]

Umm, this isn't true. Professional gamers afaik make their money from sponsors. They are therefore in the same vein as a lot of sports/entertainment professionals.

Making money by being an avenue or object of advertising for the selling of products IS economically productive, just in a less direct way than many other professions.

The only way to compare directly to poker players is to make money by entering events where the participants put up the money and being +EV in these events. I have a hard time thinking up real life examples of this.

Being a golf/pool hustler has some similarities, but also some differences.

[stinkypete]

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Poker players contribute a lot more to society than homeless bumps.

[/ QUOTE ]

nope! homeless bumps contribute just as much as poker players.

[Dima2000123]

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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.

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Obviously there's going to be a short term shock if millions of jobs disappear overnight, but since that's not on the agenda, I'm not worried about it.

In the long run I'm right, our economy is dynamic, and jobs and opportunities are created as needed, and as such there is no such concept as "surplus job or opportunity". If all unproductive jobs are phased out at reasonable pace, other jobs and opportunities will be created, and on average we'd all be better off for it.

As for unproductive jobs being necessary to keep people employed, I think you're back to the broken window fallacy.

[Tien]

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And you are so horribly wrong when you say:

"paying taxes is not being productive"
"Spending money is not being productive"


You do understand that the entire world economy works because people pay taxes and spend a bunch of money.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, I do not in fact understand that. Please do explain that to me, I must've been sick during that lecture in college.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sooo, how would the world economy do if consumer spending all across the world were to be cut by 50% and how would the world economy be effected if people were to stop paying taxes?

I don't need to go to a college lecture to figure that answer out.

[stinkypete]

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I am able to think about these issues particularly clearly, more so than lots of other people in my field, because I am a gambler. So if poker players don't contribute anything, neither do academic theorists.

[/ QUOTE ]

i'm pretty sure they teach courses in logic at cornell. you might want to look into that.

[/ QUOTE ]

So you don't understand the meaning of this sentence or are you deliberately dense?

Be careful stinkypete, it might require a little thing called INFERENCE. I don't know if your deductive logic capabilities can handle it.

[/ QUOTE ]

nobody's suggesting that it's impossible for a poker player to contribute to society. they're just pointing out the simple fact that the act of earning money by playing poker does nothing to contribute to society.

you wrote a paper. you are a poker player. poker players are thus in the same category as academics, because academics also write papers.

to me, that's a pretty retarded argument. but maybe you used some special ivy league logic that the rest of us mere mortals can't comprehend.