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

[Daddys_Visa]

[ QUOTE ]


If you get down to it, 90% of all jobs provide bs unneeded services. Anything other than scientific research, food and shelter production are kind of unnecessary.



[/ QUOTE ]

Police. Firemen. Doctors. Nurses. Teachers. Bankers. Soldiers. Electricity companies. Phone companies. Gas station attendants. Taxi drivers...etc...etc...

If you add up all those necessary services I bet you get pretty close to 90% of all jobs. I think you greatly overestimate the proportion of professions that are useless.

And even if your figure of 90% was right, it still doesn't make poker pros any less useless. We're back to the "Jobs X and Y are useless, so its OK for me to be useless too" argument again.

[Jack Ruby]

What makes something useful or useless?

You or the consumer?

Are you the czar of what is useless and what is not useless?

I would argue it is market driven.

A large number of people would rather compete at poker rather than watch a movie.

Most needs are perceived.

I think a better statement would be Poker pros are useless for YOU.

Clearly their is a demand for competition at poker

[curtains]

I find these threads so dumb, why do they always go to 20+ pages? No the act of playing poker isn't exactly a great contribution to society. Who cares? Just as it wouldn't be great to watch TV or play video games for 14 hours in a day, you shouldn't play poker 14 hours in a day on a regular basis.

Do you think they have these mindless threads at the World of Warcraft server all the time? Just because you can make money at poker doesn't make it any different. Not every single action that you take has to be some major contribution to society. Just use the rest of your time wisely and you can rest easy that you are a great contributing to the world. Worst case, make lots of money playing poker, donate it. Money and time both have value to society, and often money has more value.

[Abbaddabba]

[ QUOTE ]
Police. Firemen. Doctors. Nurses. Teachers. Bankers. Soldiers. Electricity companies. Phone companies. Gas station attendants. Taxi drivers...etc...etc...

If you add up all those necessary services I bet you get pretty close to 90% of all jobs. I think you greatly overestimate the proportion of professions that are useless.

And even if your figure of 90% was right, it still doesn't make poker pros any less useless. We're back to the "Jobs X and Y are useless, so its OK for me to be useless too" argument again.

[/ QUOTE ]


In a perfectly competitive market for labour, social gains from working a job approach zero. And realistically, there are a whole lot of job markets that behave a lot like that.


Take a line worker in a factory. If they did not exist, there would be someone else in his or her place doing the exact same job for the same wage, offering the same marginal benefit to the company, who offers their product for the same price to consumers, who receive the same marginal utility from consuming that product.


The same is true for many wage based occupations.



It is not from the benevolence of the Lawyer, the Accountant, or the McWorker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

[Daddys_Visa]

[ QUOTE ]
What makes something useful or useless?

You or the consumer?

Are you the czar of what is useless and what is not useless?

I would argue it is market driven.

A large number of people would rather compete at poker rather than watch a movie.

Most needs are perceived.

I think a better statement would be Poker pros are useless for YOU.

Clearly their is a demand for competition at poker

[/ QUOTE ]

I am defining useful as providing a needed/requested service to society. Poker games would exist without pros. The fish would still have their competition....with other amateurs and part time pros who have "useful" jobs outside of poker. If you have two poker tables with an empty seat, a typical casino player has a choice to sit at the 9-handed game of pros or the 9-handed game of amateurs, do you really think most people would choose the game with the pros?

I am not the judge and jury of what is useful and what is useless. What I can say is that my opinions seem to be echoed by the majority of posters in this thread, suggesting that a good number of posters on this site feel the same way.

What do you mean by "it is market driven"? Do you mean that the fish demand competition so the pros give it to them? We're back to my argument that poker would survive without pros. Maybe even thrive.

The poker and movie analogy again. Same argument from me: poker would survive without pros.

I agree most needs are perceived. The cavemen didn't need most of the professions I listed. But they also had an average lifespan of 30 years and lived a disease filled subsistance existance. For all the faults of modern man, we still have it much better than they did.

Not just me, but the vast majority of others too.

Again I agree there is a demand for competition at poker, but the full time poker pro is not vital to providing that service.

[Abbaddabba]

[ QUOTE ]
Poker games would exist without pros.

[/ QUOTE ]


They would for a short period, until it created a new breed of lesser pros.

[Daddys_Visa]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Police. Firemen. Doctors. Nurses. Teachers. Bankers. Soldiers. Electricity companies. Phone companies. Gas station attendants. Taxi drivers...etc...etc...

If you add up all those necessary services I bet you get pretty close to 90% of all jobs. I think you greatly overestimate the proportion of professions that are useless.

And even if your figure of 90% was right, it still doesn't make poker pros any less useless. We're back to the "Jobs X and Y are useless, so its OK for me to be useless too" argument again.

[/ QUOTE ]


In a perfectly competitive market for labour, social gains from working a job approach zero. And realistically, there are a whole lot of job markets that behave a lot like that.


Take a line worker in a factory. If they did not exist, there would be someone else in his or her place doing the exact same job for the same wage, offering the same marginal benefit to the company, who offers their product for the same price to consumers, who receive the same marginal utility from consuming that product.


The same is true for many wage based occupations.



It is not from the benevolence of the Lawyer, the Accountant, or the McWorker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

[/ QUOTE ]

Take one line worker out and there may be minimal social impact, I agree. But now try taking out all the line workers. Now how about all the doctors and nurses and police. Your example only works on a micro scale. There are also some job markets that are already short of workers, so each one you remove cannot be replaced easily, and the social impact is much greater.

[Daddys_Visa]

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[ QUOTE ]
Poker games would exist without pros.

[/ QUOTE ]


They would for a short period, until it created a new breed of lesser pros.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not defining a pro as a winning player. I am defining a pro as someone who has no other occupation aside from playing poker. I am saying that poker would survive without any 9-5 fulltime poker players.

[Dima2000123]

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I don't think anyone has ever believed in an "invisible hand theory" in the sense you're trying to refute here. Certainly Adam Smith didn't believe the market was or contained a genie whose job it was to make everything perfect. All he actually said is that most people make their money by selling something that other people want.

[/ QUOTE ]
That's certainly the sense implied. Saying that "it happens in the free market, therefore it's ultimately good for society" is a naive misunderstanding of the invisible hand, and it is in many ways like a religious belief.

Smith's sense of invisible hand was that in certain conditions, every individual working purely in their self-interest contributes to society without setting out to do that. He didn't say that it was magical, only that it had the same effect as if some genie was making everything work in a way that maximizes benefit to society.

It really is almost magic when invisible hand works. However, it is also very important to understand that when key conditions are not satisfied, the invisible hand does not work. Therefore, referring to the concept of invisible hand as an argument without further analysis is just intellectually lazy and a cop out.

[Dima2000123]

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There are laws against polluting and damaging the environment. Can you cite a case of a company causing more damge to the environment then they produce? Their are many cases of companies being forced to spend milions to clean up spills of hazerdous material or waste.

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Bingo, we need the visible hand of the law to step in when existence of significant externalities makes the invisible hand stop working. How the existence of pollution laws supports the argument that invisible hand always works is beyond me, however. It seems like the exact opposite to me.

[ QUOTE ]
The Invisible hand works quite well. Don't you ever marvel at the nearly infinite amount of goods and services readily available to you day or night? How do you think that happens?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, I've read the first chapter in economics textbook as well. However, I've also gone on to some chapters beyond that discuss the situations where things are not so idyllic.