In the OPs example, Phil Ivey "deserves" to make millions because he finds other people willing to play a game with him where the outcome is them giving him millions. That's all there is to it, and i don't see where "morality" comes into it at all. If no one was willing to pay him that kind of money, he wouldn't have it, but apparently, some people do find value in paying him that much.

It's the same with professional athletes. They make as much as they do because a lot of people are willing to pay a lot of money for the service they provide. $100 game tickets, $250 to watch the season on the internet, $70 jerseys, you name it.

That's the beauty of the system: You get to decide what your own time and money is worth to you. If a majority of people decided not to pay for tickets, watch the Super Bowl, etc., the wages of professional athletes go down. If everyone decides they aren't going to work at mcdonalds for 7 bucks an hour, wages for mcdonalds employees go up.

If you want to argue that it's immoral that people use their money to watch sports instead of help the poor or pay teachers or whoever more money, okay, maybe. But I'm also willing to bet that almost anyone asserting that premise is a hypocrite. The person who spends more time/money contributing to society than they do entertaining themselves is few and far between.

I believe your basic premise (anything which is not done for the good of society is immoral) is flawed.

If you're correct, you're actually quite immoral for spending all this time ITT when you could be doing things to better society. There's nothing you can do on these forums that is going to make society any better.

What does it mean for a system to be "immoral?"

Is someone making an informed choice between two systems, and deliberately choosing the one that is worse for people? I'd call that immoral.

But I'm not sure that happens much.

Either way, do I think rich people "deserve" to be rich? Not at all. Why is that relevant? I don't see how a system in which everybody gets what they "deserve," according to some standard, is even possible in the real world.

I much prefer a world in which some people get more than they deserve than a world in which people get less than they deserve. It's annoying when rich people think they're better than everybody else because they have money, but people will be people.

I'm much more concerned with addressing people at the bottom rungs, the homeless and poor, than those at the top. I'm amenable to the idea of taxing the **** out of the rich in order to provide a social safety net, but not because it hurts the rich so much as because it helps the poor.

(Meritocracy would be nice but ain't gonna happen.)

Look at it from the other direction and start much smaller. If people get together and play poker for real money, and for the sake of discussion the game is unraked, there are going to be winners and losers. If people play for enough money (and it doesn't take much), it's quite possible for a winning player to beat the hourly/weekly earn rate of any job he could land. So your question, in principle, is no different than asking why some guy clearing $15/hr deserves to earn twice as much as people who work minwage at McDonalds or scrubbing stalls and "actually contribute something to society".

So what do you propose doing about that? Banning real-money poker because it can lead to people making a living in ways you don't like? Taxing winnings at absurd rates to effectively ban it (losers lose, winners pay it all in tax)? And while you're at it, ban play money poker too. It lets people make a living supplying tables/chips etc, and that obviously doesn't help the rest of society either and actually diverts resources away. And ban disc golf too for the same reason.

It's not a question of morality, it's a question of inevitability. What you have to do to avoid the outcome of "non-contributing" careers is so absurd- basically successfully banning all leisure/personal spending- that I really can't take it seriously. I mean if you want to go form your Borg no-fun collective where everybody works tirelessly and only for the common good, knock yourself out, but don't expect a line to join.

"people who think there as good as us just because they're rich" (or something like that) - Mario Puzo, Fools die

Deserves?

This is not really universally accepted. Quality of life is what matters most to most people. Getting more time to live is only part of that equation.

Anyway, Phil Ivey deserves his millions for the entertainment he provides. We need entertainment for good happy lives.

You are right. But the two are mostly connected: longer lifespan - longer average quality life.

That statement is pretty clearly false in the modern west. You think going from 80 to 90 increases your average quality of life?

Depends. If the years from 70-80 were improved then perhaps yes.

The only way to go from 80 to 90 is to improve quality life from 70-80 and 60-70 etc. Pathology of life has a cumulative damaging effect and produces death in the end.

Depending on what you mean, I think this might be the smartest post in this thread.

You get paid mostly based on what the perceived worth you have in most markets.

So, a salesperson might make 10x what a laborer does, despite the fact that the laborer clearly works harder. The reason for this is that we think that loads of people can and are willing to be laborers. We think that very few can and are willing to be salespeople.

The same can be said for engineers. They sit around doing math problems, which is easier (in a way) than lifting things.

I can't think of a way of getting around this, so it might be a "it is what it is" sort of thing.

I'm not sure this is the best conclusion. All economical values are made by trade. Give something to the society and people will give you money. Sitting around doing math problems has nothing to do with that so there is no money to be made. Einstein maybe wrote the best theory for the humanity but it's only that.... a theory.

I'm tempted to say this is right but it would be deceiving. Depends on the word perceived. You get paid mostly based on what the other party thinks you are worth, in most markets. (justin bieber makes a lot of money because he provides to people in this society what they want and there is a big demand on his "skill")

People desperately want this to be true and the hope is reinforced by the heavy bias of the people they meet who are heavily biased towards the people getting the best of it.

In fact its almost certainly false and people who confuse longevity with a good life are making a big mistake.

quality life= healthy - disease free life, without obvious degradation of motor, cognitive or general organ functions

if we are using this term in the same way can you explain why" in fact its almost certainly false"?

because unhealthy, disease, loss of all functions come with longevity and they come real bad. The nistake is thinking you will be one of the lucky few rather than the many hidden away or quietly dont have their lives prolonged.

Even in our wierd mustn't openly let people die with dignity societities we understand 'do not resuscitate'.

To unfairly misquote my father - "Death is not so bad when you consider the alternative"