You can use the “if I don’t do it, somebody else just will” philosophy to justify being a mafia hitman, but it doesn’t mean killing people for money is moral.
Straight buying/selling of stocks is a zero-sum game; to sell a stock someone else has to buy it for the sale price. However there are dividends as well which add value to the shareholder independently of the market value of the stock.
Mosier: Sure, and you can use the rule that you ought not profit from other’s harmful vices to disallow selling fatty foods (become some of your customers will be compulsive overeaters) or running a liquor store (because some of you income will come from alcoholics), but it doesn’t mean that selling hamburgers or wine is immoral.
No it isn’t. Dividends aren’t any different from capital gains. Neither are a zero sum game. If equity investments were a zero sum game the average return on investment over time would be 0% and it obviously isn’t.
I think it is a bit immoral sell alcohol to an alcoholic, just as much as it is to take money from a compulsive gambler. I’m not saying playing poker is immoral, but fleecing the suckers is just as immoral at a poker table as it is with a plain old fashioned con.
Obviously I’m no expert, but I find this kind of thing interesting, so I’ll explain how I’m thinking about this and hopefully people can tell me if I’m making sense or not.
It’s true that the average return is greater than zero, but it seems like that’s because more money is getting tied up in the market. For example:
Say I have $100 and my friend has $200. Company X has an IPO, and I buy $100 of their stock. So now the company has $100, I have $0 (and the stock), and my friend still has $200. The market price increases to $200; I decide to sell and he decides to buy. Now the company still has my $100, I have $200, and my friend has $0 and the stock.
My return is 100%, but that is based on the fact that there’s now an extra $100 tied up in the market. The company is +100 from my initial purchase, I’m +100 from my stock trading, and my friend is -200 from his purchase. So it looks like zero-sum.
Now while all this is going on, the company may be making money and paying out dividends, providing profit to my friend or me aside from the stock price. But I had separated that out and was only talking about the share price as zero-sum.
As a former pro poker player, I found that “fleecing the suckers” only occurred when someone, the sucker, thought he was a better player than he was and sat down to show it to the world. His pride led to his downfall, not my good play.
Also, I tended to view my job then as a provider of entertainment. I made the most money by being pleasant and enjoyable to be around. I kept the game going and if people had a good time, they would continue staying and losing. I also had some qualms about not contributing to society, but realistically, there are many many jobs out there that are done only to make money and do not benefit society at all, so the problem was much larger than my line of work.
The share price isn’t zero sum, because your friend is going to sell later for a profit. Or maybe she won’t. But there’s a possibility, and if she doesn’t it’s not because it was impossible, which would be the case if our economy was zero-sum.
But to your point, there’s no difference between dividends and share price. On the first day of an introductory finance class you learn about time value of money. On the second day, you learn that the value of a stock is the value today of all future cash flows from that stock, just like any asset. So what are those cash flows? Well you might earn a dividend, then another dividend, then another dividend, then you decide to sell it and you earn whatever price you sell it for. But what price will that be? Well the buyer will also be determining HIS future cash flows from the stock, a dividend, a dividend, a dividend, sell the stock. Repeat indefinitely.
So after the second day of introductory finance, you would conclude that all of a stock’s value is derived from the infinite series of dividend payments. Luckily the infinite series converges. Anytime you get a payment for sale of the stock, realize that 100% of the value for the sale you’re getting is based on future expected dividends.
Do real investors look at future share price as much or more than dividends? Yes. Have many companies never paid dividends? Absolutely. But this is only the 2nd day of introductory finance and I’m saying that there’s no future-sale-of-stock that can’t be represented as a series of infinite dividends.
None of that has anything to do with zero-sum games in any event. The question is, is the economy growing? Is it at least possible for the economy to grow? If so, then it’s necessarily possible for there to be a net profit from owning the individual companies that make up the economy. Microsoft doesn’t grow by diminishing Ford. Ford doesn’t decrease in value so that Walmart can be worth more money. Why on earth would the underlying securities be zero-sum if the economy isn’t?
Note: I take the word “suckers” in this context to mean people who gamble compulsively and/or irresponsibly, to the point of doing demonstrable harm to themselves or their families. If you’re using “suckers” in the more common way, referring simply to fools and poor players in general, I take your argument to be absurd on its face.
Now then: I think you go too far. Refusing to play with “suckers” *may *be especially commendable, but that doesn’t mean that agreeing to play against them is immoral. In the first place, how do you know who’s a sucker? It’s not hard to pick out the poor players, but how do you know which poor players have next month’s mortgage payment on the table? I’ve very frequently suspected opponents of being problem gamblers, but very rarely *known *them to be so with any degree of confidence. If I was saintly and left the table every time I thought there was a “sucker” in the game, I’d spend half my time in brick & mortar poker rooms asking for table changes in the pursuit of harder games, which would effectively mean I couldn’t play poker except online.
I don’t think your precept that it’s immoral to fleece the suckers is completely without merit; for instance, if you have a coworker whom you know to be a compulsive gambler, you ought not to invite him to your home game. However, if everyone followed your precept diligently, live poker among strangers would be virtually impossible.
I’m having a hard time thinking of any. I suppose you could argue that marketing, as it is actually practiced, is mostly pernicious, but what else did you have in mind?
Lawyers exist primarily to ensure our continued dependency on them. After that, I got nothin’. 
Women are everybit as capable of gambling stupidly. China use to have a huge problem with Women wasting the day, and the family money in Mah Jongg games.
The reason it is veiwed as on the egde of morality, is because it can lead to an increase in disorder in society. Governments and religons since the beggining of time have existed because of a shared intrest in an ordered society. And they have always had to balance prohibitions on things that lead to disorder, (ie. Gambling, Drinking, Drugs, irresponsible sex) against the fact the people are going to do them anyway, and where to draw the line to create as much harmony as possible.
Plenty of jobs focus on producing things that we only want and do not need. If we say that gambling, which produces entertainment, does not contribute to society, than by extension any product that only gives us entertainment is an equal waste. Realistically, what does society need with blockbuster movies? With those various gadgets that people carry like toys? These things are not necessities, and it would be hard to prove that they improve society as a whole. However, we all enjoy them and they will continue to be produced.
There are plenty of jobs that do not make necessities. My qualm was in thinking I should pursue a “worthwhile” career. I got over that. I can use my free time to volunteer and attempt to improve society, and stop feeling guilty for doing what I enjoy.