I looked, not very hard, and i see people like Einstein making far reaching contributions. You either live in a cave or are seriously self deluded. Each job has a varying range of contribution towards society. There are doctors that choose to work in poor countries doing vital life saving work instead of being plastic surgeons for rich people. There are engineers that choose to work on environmental related technology. Poker isn't the worst job in the world, but imo it's in the bottom half on the spectrum of "how much does this job contribute to society".

Yeah, seen this so much before. It's a rationalization that people make that absolves themselves of any responsibility. They're saying well, basically every job sucks, then mine does too and everythings completely hopeless so I don't have to do anything because it doesn't matter anyway.

In any case, i've always seen poker as a net negative in my years of playing for a living. If someone gets rich from it then they can consider doing something else that may benefit society, since with wealth comes some responsibility.

finding poker saved my life.

couldn’t care less about the other stuff

Please don't take this personally but if anyone is deluded it is you. Frankly I'm shocked by the level of naivete from 'worldly' poker players. Yes, yes, yes, I agree that Mr. Einstein was a genius and I could name many others in many walks of life. And I stand by my point that in the end it's all for nothing. And it's helpful to know that going in. Please look around. There have been people working hard and if anything we're losing ground. We're losing ground because despite science and education half the country, at least, is simply morons who won't get a damn shot. Oh, it's almost 2023 and we're having a measles outbreak. Need I bring up the climate, stripping of rights by a crackpot Supreme Court and so much else? If it helps one ego to believe they're making a difference. . .be my guest. I conclude with a quote from 'The Grapes of Wrath': "It all comes down to what you tell yourself."

it's like you place no value in regular people's experiences, past, present and future. sure, you can take the view that it's all inconsequential in the bigger picture but it's a pretty ****ing depressing approach.

Arguably, to a capitalist economist eye, there is a social utility to poker in that

(1) it moves capital from less-skilled hands to more-skilled hands, and

(2) encourages capital formation in units large enough to warrant investment rather than simply consumption.

If poker soon parts a fool from his money, isn't that a net social benefit ?

(I'm not adopting these points, just stating them in the context of OP's query.

fwiw, I learned poker in the early 1970s playing against Booth School free-market capitalists at the University of Chicago. By and large Milton Friedman's students were crappy poker players.)

Things could be far worse than they are. I have clean drinking water and medical care, thanks to the CONTRIBUTIONS of many PEOPLE in our SOCIETY. So yeah, it's not all for nothing, because i enjoy having clean drinking water rather than not having it. Clearly it makes no difference to you though. Also the reason i bought up einstein was because we all use a bunch of technology thanks to his discoveries. The whole genius thing is an evasion.

Interesting post!
And the same can be said for just about anything in our economy, except for government forced redistribution.
Which leaves the morality question, which I don't have any issues with. Each society collectively determines its mores and morality. I don't have any issues with legalized poker, although I think generally today's societal mores and morals have become somewhat warped. Does that make me a hypocrite? Perhaps some may say yes.
How interesting! I've been a Friedman-ite for a long time. Four ways to spend money. (1) Your money on yourself. (2) Your money on someone else. (3) Someone else's money on yourself. (4) Someone else's money on someone else. Gotta be some parallels to poker there.
P.S.
Also, one way or another, all debts get paid.

The benefits should be evident to anyone and everyone who doesn't even participate. The fact that the benefits are nebulous, esoteric, and hard to pinpoint means that advocates are grasping at straws.

There are solutions to this, but they are unpopular and would require possible limits of freedom.

The source is tainted. This is like saying if drug kingpins supported and built communities and industries, then drug trafficking is ok.

You're arguing a strawman here.

What are you on about, mate? You're injecting speculation, but not making a point of substance.

I didn't say anything about lotteries or who should be running gambling operations.

According to this line of reasoning, drug cartels should be excused and their operations deemed a net benefit to society as well. They employ thousands of drivers, cooks, cleaners, bodyguards, soldiers, lawyers, engineers, doctors, warehousing workers, and even support politicians. That's a lot of families supported and mouths fed.

Any idea of drawing moral equivalence between casino business & drug cartel business is stillborn. Just my own wrong opinion.

The "job creation" argument is indeed a pretty terrible one. It's presented as a dichotomy. You could create jobs in gambling, but you could also create jobs in almost any other sector by choosing to invest in those instead. This argument is used by the fossil fuel industry a lot, even though there are more jobs that could be created in the clean energy sector.

That's not what he was doing though. He was examining the logical structure of your argument, which was:

"Because X creates jobs, it is therefore morally justified."

He wasn't saying that drug cartels are evil, or morally equivalent to anything. It may well be a morally virtuous to torture and murder thousands of people if it gives thousands more people jobs. I think that's a pretty deplorable view, but it's not relevant here. What's relevant is that the logic you used can be used to justify the existence of drug cartels.

With respects, this wasn't my argument at all. This thread is about poker/casinos and my comment was specific to contributions from that sector once society & investors decide it's something they want to have.
Not to diverge from the thread, but clean energy is not clean (aka green energy is not green). Nor does it solve the societal demand for reliable electrical capacity. Hard data from last couple of decades is overwhelming. For example, do a search for the amount of environmental destruction caused by and oil/coal-based fuel burned to create one modern electric car. It's quite staggering. Or the people in Texas who froze their balls off last winter when the expected wind input to the electrical grid failed miserably in adverse weather.

Poker has been studied by many intelligent mathematicians, so just for that it has brought some benefit to the world.

I wasn't talking about electric cars, because i wasn't sure how clean they are. Solar/nuclear/wind are all far cleaner than fossil fuels, as can be seen in the world energy output study done by the IEA every year. The same study is pretty clear that they are more efficient once you take into account the externalities from fossil fuels. Anyway, not gona talk about this more because it will completely derail the topic.

Yeah, not poker specifically, but the desire to win at gambling did give rise to probability theory in the 15th/16th century. I think? That discovery is a far bigger contribution to society than virtually anything people have listed in this thread. Game theory was developed by Jon von neuman and he had poker on his mind. There is a lot of innovation that comes out of the desire to kill people, get rich, or control people's thoughts and habits. But that's mainly because that's what scientists and other nerds get paid to do. If they got funding for other research then maybe our rockets wouldnt work quite so well, but we'd have more innovation in other area's.

Yours and other people's lack of imagination is silly to me. Have you owned power tool throwout the last 10 years? Leaps and bounds in power and durability. Same whith our phones. Technology can and will catch up to these problems.
Or should we just not try?

Ya, hard to compete with Einstein. Doubt my 'range research' would be useful for thremonuclear weapons.


So hire a bunch of engineers to create technolgy that destroys the enviornment and then another bunch to fix it? Sounds cool, I guess that's a good thing - but is it really a net positive?

Which is kind of an odd question given it isn't typical asked of that bottom half. When people are seaching the help wanted ads on facejobs or whatever it is, most aren't looking to see what they could contribute to society. They're looking for money, hopefully in something they might be good at and enjoy, or something they think is cool and would give them social status.

And again, how much are these jobs really contibuting? Often they're just pushing some product or service that feeds our overconsumption and accumulation of unecessary shite, and in many cases just serves as a distraction to the real world and any contributions we could be making during the 60-70% of our lives when we're off the job.

Why? It's not like most people are going about their life calculating the benfits a plastic cup and a car have on society, it's just some stuff they want. And it's apparent, especially coming from those bitching about poker, that they're not calculating, or even care about the negative costs associated with these various other products/services.


Well, people have already listed the apparent benefits, you can chose to ingnore them if you want. Buy ya, there are numerous other benefits that may be more personal/indirect, but why should anyone have to explain? At the end of the day, the vast majority of consenting adults in the U.S have decided that this is something they want available to them for whatever reason or benefit the see and whenever. Last I've check, over 80% of the people have gambled. 60% Gambled this year, 40% last month. So like what, 150 million people or so? Of those 150 million, 10 million fit the definition of a compulsive gambler, of which an estimated 2 million actually saw it as a problem in their life. So again, I think a bit of perspective is in order.


As with anything else, you identify the problems and provide mitigating factors over time. The ship sails and you plug the leaks as you go - it was like this with cars, technology and the enviornment, the internet, crypto, alcohol, whatever. . .

In regulated markets there are built in controls to both identify problem gambling and block access if necessary - mostly voluntary, but there are instances where people have been cut off, all primamrly due to new responsible gaming regulations. There's also more access to support groups and treatment programs today. I even think most insurnace providers will even pay for the treatment nowadays. I could probably go on, but I'm sure there's always room for improvement.


Well I made the effort to imply you weren't the one making that particular argument, but often, the increase in crime is used as an argument against gambling. But the point there was to use it as a segway to show how it was the housing and auto industry that did more damage to that specific part of society than poker ever did, and likely ever will.

I know you're speking generally, but within the context of poker/gambling, wherein lies the responsibility? I know the OP hasn't had a good experience. He hates poker, he hates himself for playing, he hates all of us, and wants poker banned.

And I get it, that sucks. I don't know exactly how bad it was for him, but I've had a similar experience 20 years ago so I can relate to a certain extent. But looking back on on it, poker wasn't the problem. The problem was my outlook on life, mismangament of time and a flawed, over-valued view of money. I saw poker as a quick fix to my problems and when it didn't deliver I became resentful. So that's just a bad way to start any endeavor, whether it be a career, a relationship, decision to have a child, whatever. And then when it doesn't work out, it's a bad look to just point the finger at everyone else and start looking to ban everything.

I wasn't speaking generally, i was talking within a specific context of the poster who was essentially saying all jobs are meaningless and have a dead end. Which is clearly not true. I don't get what the rest of your post has to do with my comment, but i guess i agree? Same with the comment about engineers. Your comment makes no sense in the context of what i was talking about there.

Also, Einstein wrote a letter with Bertrand Russell calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons. So I think his life's work contributed a lot to making the world a more peaceful place. Overall, a stand up guy. Aside from that, you gotta look at the net total contributions of someone, not just pick out one bad consequence of something they did.

I agree with you that many jobs are a complete waste of time (in your above comments). There's some research into this, (see article called "bullshit jobs", by David Graeber).

Banning poker may be the way to go.
True I hate myself when I play, feel as God has cursed me. If only I was that special. Trying to find some meaning or just an excuse for my participation in playing. Sometimes it's just a bowl of ****, and I can choose to eat or not,

Because when the best arguments in favour of it are job creation and providing entertainment it needs a lot more going for it to justify it as a net benefit to society overall (because of the harms it also brings as a package deal), as there are many other alternatives that provides both without the negative effects provided by the gambling industry.

They don't have to calculate the benefits because those are obvious, which was the point I was trying to get at. The harms, however, are a different consideration and not always apparent, until further investigation, as in the case of plastics and automobiles running on petrol.

With gambling, it's the reverse. That is to say, it's the harms that are
immediately apparent and it's the benefits that require further investigation.

"Because people want it"/"because the market demands it" aren't reasons for why something is excused from the criticism of providing benefits/harms to society. One might retort, "so what? So what what if gambling is predatory and parasitic? So what if more people get ****ed by gambling than see any positives from it." To that I'd say it's a free country and you can do what the laws allow, but don't piss in our ears and tell us it's raining.

Let's admit, like responsible and rational adults, that the harms outweigh the benefits and move on. People too often have emotional knee-jerk reactions to these discussions, because in their mind they're adding in what they think they're hearing, "so don't do it."


Which benefits precisely? If you're referring to job creation and community development, that's a specious argument, because practically anything else can do the same. If you're referring to something I may have missed, then I apologize.

Classic argument an populum. "Because everyone's doing it/wants to do it" is not an explanation of its benefits or a reason for it's justification.

If you want to go the utilitarian route and argue that the desire to partake in this activity by the majority provides happiness, then fine. But don't forget the other half of that equation.

The problems in the case of gambling are immediately apparent. The only commonly known solution is GA, whose efficacy I haven't studied. From anecdotal self reports I've read online, it does seem to be effective for most, which suggests that it's methodology must be somewhat reliable, if not robust.

You used a very specific instance to demonstrate that it wasn't in fact gambling that contributed to the harm brought about in the city, which in and of itself is telling.

But while we're on that point, if we care enough (I don't, I'm just enjoying the discussion lol) about the side effects like crime rates, we would have to do a meta analysis of cities all across the US before and after gambling operations were introduced. It wouldn't be easy as we'd have to control for numerous confounds. Someone already did point out that there are an increased number of pawn shops that pop up when casinos are built. You don't need to be all that wise in the ways of the world to infer a probable connection with a potential increase in the rates of theft, but we can't speculate too much without looking at any data first.

In a nutshell, live poker is a net positive for society, maybe not a huge net positive, but a positive nonetheless.

Whereas online poker is a massive net negative for society.

I apply the the same thinking and viewpoint regarding any type of sports or game related gambling or betting.

The main reason for all of the above is that live gambling is more human, usually quite time limited, and the person doing the gambling
most of the time has a proper understanding and perception of reality while they are gambling.

Also, related job creation and other commercial activity, both of which support society overall, is greater in size, more varied, and again more human, for live gambling.

Live gambling would be like going to the pub with friends for a few drinks, online gambling for many is more like being at home drinking a bottle of vodka alone,

Clearly, I'm generalising the extremes of safety versus danger with the analogy above, but I think it's a correct analogy to demonstrate that live gambling is mostly harmless to most people but online gambling can be harmful to a significant number of people, while at the same time it doesn't produce anywhere near as much related benefits to the local economy.

Most online poker or gambling's profits go into a relatively small number of people's pockets, and there isn't much of a positive ripple effect outwards into society.

I think you're off with this one, online may be a bit more accessible but degenerate gamblers are going to get their fix regardless, also there are no micro stakes live, so if you decide to gamble in a live setting you're going to lose a significant amount of money, can't play a whole night with 10 bucks like you technically could online

anyway poker has allowed me to make more money than any job I could have found probably at the age that I did and provide for my wife and kids but in the end it's really just that, what I'm providing to society is a mix of pain and pleasure to the people I take money from (mostly pain I assume), I'm pretty sure people who trade stocks feel the same way, it's just a useless endeavor geared exclusively toward making money and nothing else

In the end there are some pros to poker like learning how to manage risks, being able to see things in life from a probabilistic point of view I feel is quite useful but there are definitely way more cons from a societal point of view, there are a lot of very smart people in the poker community who have made millions from poker that I think are all essentially wasting away all their brainpower and it's a little depressing to think about