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

[Tien]

Casinos can contribute economically by bringing in jobs and employment / tourism yet not contribute socially by destroying many degenerate's lives.


That's why I've always said this argument of contribution was a load of crock to begin with.

[blueodum]

"Poker certainly has no positive effect on physical health. "

But it does develop various intellectual and personality traits that are useful and largely lacking in the general populace.

[blueodum]

"It went something like poker players sell a certain rush, some sort of dream of a better place for the losing player for a while, and then finally the 'pro' ends up with most of his money and the loser leaves feeling empty, discouraged and not feeling good about his losses. Sort of what you feel after doing some extacy, coke or another drug. Obviously not the same feeling but you get the point."

No. CASINOS do this. The winning poker player is just a small cog in about 1% of the operation. Casinos inflict far more negative externalities than all the pro poker players in the world combined. And yet this is considered a legitimate business, in that very few people will ask a casino manager what they contribute to society.

This is the main point to be made about this topic. It shouldn't be arguing about whether poker is "productive" (in a narrow economic sense it is not) or whether it "contributes" to society (in the broad sense it must, since so many people engage in this activity voluntarily.). These terms are subjective and you'll never get everyone to agree on what they mean.

A pro poker player is merely playing a role within the poker economy. A role that must exist because, of necessity, some players must be winning players while most others must be losing players. If it were not so the whole system would break down and there would be no poker industry as we know it.

It is the stigma attached to the professional gambler (sportbettor, blackjack card counter, backgammon pro, poker player etc) that is the real issue.

Over the years a lot of jobs have evolved to serve the needs of societies and frankly we would be better off if many of them just disappeared. For example, do we really need the ridiculous number of consumer products that are available to us? Think of all the raw materials, time, energy, labor and thought power devoted to these things. In a rational sense it is a huge waste of resources.

But people are seduced into thinking that having them would be a good thing, would make their lives better (like a drug, getting a new "toy" creates a temporary high).

If the entire advertising industry were phased out over the next three decades we would all be better off.

Why is there not a similar stigma attached to all these other marginally useful (at best) jobs?

Addressing a point made by another poster:

As far as the argument about many intelligent people playing poker instead of discovering cures for cancer... Well, this is inevitable in a society where individuals are allowed to choose their own profession. Maybe someone who was destined to invent a brilliant new technology, didn't because he was more interested in other things and took a job at a bank instead.

Do you think it would be a good idea to force people to go into professions based on what some sort of "objective" test determines them to be suitable for?

[Poker monkey]

OK at first sight I'm fairly convinced that professional poker doesn't contribute to society.

However I'm a bit more in two minds about the taxes not counting thing. The logical conclusion of this argument is

1) The act of paying taxes contributes nothing to society
2) So bypassing the government and giving directly to good causes contributes nothing to society
3) So giving money to charity does not benefit society
4) People shouldn't give money to charity because there's no benefit

Is this correct? Should we tell the billionaire philanthropists not to bother?

I have a feeling that in fact giving money to charity does provide a net benefit to society. (For example, if a local project offered to pay me enough to go and work for them in my spare time instead of surfing the net or playing Civ 4, there would be a net benefit.) The logical conclusion of this is that paying taxes should be counted as a "contribution" - agree?

[Tien]

They're saying the tax aspect of it doesn't contribute because the fish would lose it to something else or someone else and that something else or someone else would end up paying an extra amount of taxes equal to the same amount of taxes the poker player would have paid.


There's a little caveat to this though. When a fish deposits into pokerstars it stays in there until a poker pro withdraws money or the pokersite wittles it away slowly through rake.

So you can argue that the poker player speeds up the process in which the money returns to the economy by withdrawing those amounts of money as well as increasing the rake for the pokersite, otherwise, that amount of money sitting there in the millions of fish's pokerstars account is essentially dead money.


It would be really evil if the bank that the pokersite uses takes that money and invests it in the open market. I think they said they don't do that but I'm not sure.

[Poker monkey]

Well my point was really that I think you can contribute just as much if you have some money and pay someone to go and contribute, as by contributing yourself, whether this is through taxes or just money you happen to have lying around.

On the other hand, if entertainers are delivering a net benefit to society, you could argue that a computer game contributes just as much. Additional benefit to society is continuously being created through the entertainment I'm getting from playing the game.

If I'm indifferent between working for a charity and playing a computer game, doesn't that mean that society is benefiting by the same amount in both cases? It's just that different people are benefiting. So maybe actually charities don't do that much net good.

[cov47]

1) Generally, more intelligent people will be better poker players than less intelligent people
2) Therefore, poker pros are likely significantly smarter than the people who constantly donate to them
3) When poker pros win at poker, they take money from less intelligent people
4) When smart people have money that used to belong to stupid people, they can spend more money
5) When more money is spent in an intelligent way, society wins

QED?

[Tien]

[ QUOTE ]
1) Generally, more intelligent people will be better poker players than less intelligent people
2) Therefore, poker pros are likely significantly smarter than the people who constantly donate to them
3) When poker pros win at poker, they take money from less intelligent people
4) When smart people have money that used to belong to stupid people, they can spend more money
5) When more money is spent in an intelligent way, society wins

QED?

[/ QUOTE ]

Considering what poker players buy with their winnings. looooooool

[Nick Rivers]

Within 100 trillion years, all black holes will dissolve and protons will decay into positrons and electrons which, in turn, will annihilate each other, leaving nothing in the universe but a vast soup of photons, photons which tell nothing of the story of the universe's past. When that time comes, nothing that has transpired in the history of the universe will be known or knowable, including whether you made a contribution to society, or whether humanity ever existed at all, so who really cares if playing poker professionally contributes to society or not? I just care that it allows me to (a) not have a job and (b) still afford nice things.

[fees]

As a poker player you are a consumer, you keep money in cycle, you help companies make money (ftp + else you buy) thus creating/keeping jobs.