The World Series of Poker is on at the moment, and it got me thinking about something I have thought about from time to time in the past.
Should we look down on people who make their living in a manner that doesn’t make a productive contribution to society? And in the case of professional poker players, is arguably hurting society? (Ie, “the best” poker players who take the money of less-skilled, or problem gamblers).
I’m not sure what my view is on this, but I’d love to see some opinions. Thanks.
Isn’t it all economic activity in one way or another?
The poker thing keeps casinos going which employ tens of thousands of people. The media coverage, more people still. Hotels to house them, etc.
Is there a downside to gambling? Yep. Coal mining can be dangerous too not just in terms of accidents but in long term health effects. Auto racing is dangerous. So is playing football. So is being a police officer.
I suppose we can debate whether the downsides become and overriding concern that should put a stop to it but in a free country you’d need to make a pretty dramatic case to get there I’d think.
You could argue that a professional poker player keeps a casino in business, but what about a professional blackjack card-counter, who takes his money from the actual casino, instead of other gamblers. Perhaps they are a better example.
Card counting is illegal or at least highly “frowned upon”.
It all depends what you mean by “productive”. Entertainers are some of the highest paid people around, however, they don’t really produce anything tangible.
Lots of people like property landlords, writers, musicians, actors, dividend stock owners and others earn passive incomes. But they are still contributing to society in indirect ways.
I think you would be hard-pressed to find someone who is getting paid to do something that doesn’t contribute in some way to somebody.
I’d start with Wall Street. In a perfect world, Wall Street investment bankers and other would be highly paid because they help channel money to the most productive endeavours. However, because they are paid based on short-term rather than long-term results, there are people who have made literally billions of dollars while helping to drive the economy into shambles by investing in highly risky derivaties and other schemes.
Risk should match reward, but there is no way to go back and collect the billions/trillions of dollars of losses that these morons created.
I have no problem with blackjack-pros and so on. Why should I? If someone wants to offer them money under whatever conditions, they’re free to have at it.
Poker players contribute to society, how could it not? The millions they spend, and the millions they save benefit society (spending it obviously helps, saving it helps investment banks invest in ideas in other areas of society, duh). The advertising dollars that go to the networks for the televised games, end up paying the network employees. We could go on and on with this.
I very much am not inclined to defend such a notion as particularly well-defined or coherent. But, just as a fun stab at it, I might think of a contribution as productive if it’s the sort of thing which, were one to do it for nothing in exchange, might be described as altruistic, even if only in a very minor way. Something which other people want you to do.
Casinos don’t really want card-counting blackjack-pros to play there (except perhaps for the advertising value they have in pulling in deluded others); they just want less-skilled, average schlubs to play there. In that sense, we might say a blackjack-pro makes money doing something not particularly “productive”. Though distinguishing the “productivity” of a blackjack-pro from an average schlub blackjack player who just gets lucky is perhaps too fuzzy to be worth trying. And I don’t really care to begin with. Still, that’s my stab at it.
I would throw in corporate lawyers, management consultants and much of upper and middle management as well.
Yes, there is a need for people who provide financing, interpret laws, offer professional advice or provide leadership and direction in a corporate hierarchy. OTOH, sometimes it seems like these people exist only to justify their existance as a class of overpaid elite.
If something couldn’t be done for free, would that make it non-productive?
I ask because I’m not sure that you can do what pro poker players do for free. If you’re doing it for free, I think, you’re just not doing what they do.
We could imagine playing a game of poker but then giving all the winnings back to whomever they came from I guess. Sort of an “exhibition” game or something. The purpose of such a game, indeed its contribution, seems quite different than that of a real pro game, so I’m not sure this counts as doing “the same thing” as playing a pro poker game. But in any case, supposing it counts, I guess performing such an exhibition would be altruistic, if there were actually people who wanted to see such exhibitions or something.
I’ve played poker professionally (ie it has been my primary or only income) for years now, and this is an issue I’ve had trouble with. There’s an odd feeling when you derive your income from doing nothing useful for society - it’s not as if I’m a mugger, forcefully leeching off of others, since everyone involved is aware of what’s going on and trying to become one of the few winners - but in some ways it feels not much different.
Similarly, it’s a zero sum game (less than zero, actually, given the rake) - any profit I make is directly at the expense of someone else. It feels very predatory. But they’re trying to do the same thing to me - the playing field is level - I’m just better at it.
But people pay for entertainment - in some cases directly to other people - and is that generally productive for society? Am I like a professional athlete in that I’m very good at a certain type of competition and I derive an income from it, or something like a stripper who fleeces people out of their money with their consent but without really contributing anything?
It’s a tricky question that I haven’t really come to terms with fully myself.
Ok, scrub the professional poker player, that was a really bad example.
Let’s focus instead on the professional blackjack player, who has figured out a way to play blackjack in a way that is mathematically favourable to him in the long run.
So, his “job” is to log 30 or 40 hours a week at a casino playing blackjack, grinding out his tiny edge that he has against the house.
Should we, as a society, look down on this type of person?
And if you were playing poker in front of an audience who wanted to watch you play poker, then, so far as my proposal goes, it would be “productive”. But that isn’t generally the sort of thing card-counting blackjack-pros do, is it?
Anyway, like I said, I don’t really want to take this proposal too seriously, so I’m afraid I’m not going to bother defending it vigorously.
I’ll just add, though, that in terms of the OP, I think what they’re getting at is not only about doing things that other people want you to do, but also that the source of your income should be payment from those very people in exchange for doing such things. So I’d have to clarify that in the proposal. But whatever. Even spending this much time on it is embarrassing me.
Pro Poker and pro blackjack players pay taxes too! It’s not like they can hide much since their income is mostly televised.
I used to have to caption these guys. Man, I miss the snoozing I used to do during work!
One thing I learned. You got 25 grand? Enter a tournament. BEHOLD! You are now a professional poker player! There is no test to take, and you could suck at it, but as long as you pay the fee, you’re professional when you enter.
There are plenty of amateur tournaments that could get you a professional status too, but only if you win big. There are online tournaments that recruit amateurs too that someone sponsors.
Even if they only sit around and play to make money, realize that it costs a LOT to stay professional. When you see someone like Farha win $500,000 in one tournament, he lost a lot in other tournaments too.
Now for professional slot players… they’re just dumb.
I don’t think it’s a bad example, and it’s (to me) an interesting topic to explore. You still have the similarity of someone deriving an income without contributing to society.
If an inventor or a garbage man stopped working, there’d be fewer inventions and your garbage wouldn’t be picked up. If a professional poker player stopped working - what would be lost? Therein lies the clear indication that it’s in a similar boat of unproductiveness.
The professional athlete makes money from the fact that people are willing to pay, or at the very least, watch a television broadcast, of that athlete doing what they do. Similarly, the stripper makes money because someone is willing to pay to watch her (or him) remove their clothes. These types of people are providing a service to society - entertainment.
The “spectacle” aspect of poker would need to be put aside for the sake of my question, ie, the fact that there are people out there who want to simply watch poker, and are willing to watch television broadcasts, hence, generating advertising dollars. Because in that sense, you could argue that poker players are “entertainers” - a completely legitimate way to make an income. But for the sake of my OP, we would need to ignore that particular aspect of professional poker, especially given that the vast majority of time that a professional poker player is playing, it is not televised or showcased in any way.
Most professional poker players are people you’ve never heard of - there are at least thousands. The most common type are probably people that play 8 tables at a time online, grinding out a very boring life.
Poker on TV has fleshed out the idea of the poker celebrity, but they aren’t the typical professional. It gives a very distorted view of poker.
This is baseless. You’re a professional when it’s your profession. When your primary income comes from it, it’s your profession. Buying into a tournament, or even winning a big one, in no way makes you a professional. And for that matter, most poker professionals don’t even care about tournaments much.