Yeah, I know what you're saying, but here's the problem: you're charging a fee for your services, but a lot of people are giving it away. To use your casino comparison: if you were in some kind of collective casino, running a standard roulette table, but there are four people on either side of you running a table without the zeros (i.e. mostly neutral-EV), are you still providing a service? I suppose, but it's neither a necessary nor desireable service. It's a service that your casino patrons would happily go without, if only they were sophisticated enough to know the difference that losing the zeros makes. The mob was providing a service too when they were kind enough to offer "protection" to local shopkeepers.

I exaggerate, of course, but I really think that you're kidding yourself here. If anything, the fee that fish pay is the rake. Losing their money on top of the rake isn't a "fee" for the action, because they can get their action from other fish, which will be neutral-EV. You're not charging them for their fun; they would be getting that anyway. You're charging them for their ignorance, or at least their ignorance relative to you: someone who spends substantially more time learning and playing this game than they'd care to commit.

And I'm sure that you're not suggesting that without the pros, or even the 2+2ers, that the tables would be virtually empty every night. There would still be thousands of games taking place on many different sites; the only difference being that the fish would have more money in their accounts at the end of the night than they would have had otherwise. Good players are not props, nor is their presence as such required.

One last thing: you conclude by saying that "there is nothing wrong with either the casino or the winning poker player charging him (the fish) a fee for his fun." That's true; there's nothing wrong with it, and that's why I happily play poker, and win. The delusion that a few posters seem to be under is that they're productive members of society, charging a fee for a service, like an accountant or masseuse. And that's just not fair.