[Nightwish]

You have a fairly simplistic notion of what constitutes "value" to society. Tell me, should we herd off the musicians and force them work in a coal mine or do something else more "productive" with their time? How about the guys working the financial markets? Besides stocks, there are now all sorts of esoteric financial instruments, like options on options and so on. Should we ban those? Send the guys running the hedge funds into the coal mine too?

There's more to "value" than just producing things you can physically touch. There's value in entertainment, value in creating capital, and yes, value in playing poker. That is, unless you're a hermit who doesn't spend any of the money he earns (no house, no food, no clothing, no taxes, no investments, nothing).