On people who play poker for a living

[Gamblor]

I'll cross post this cause it's kind of cross-topic.

As poker players, we don't earn our money. A lot of kids don't get to go extra vacations or they get cheap birthday presents because their fathers or mothers gamble away healthy sums of money. We can justify it to ourselves by saying that people choose to put their money on the table, that they can walk away any time, that they would have just lost it at blackjack etc. etc., there's no denying that if every poker player on earth were to die instantly, nothing would really be worse off. Maybe some slight entertainment value, and a few casino employees would be out of business. Truthfully though, casino employees aren't the most specialized in their skills (say, relative to aeronautical engineers) and thus are capable of finding other work in a variety of fields.

We suck money out of the economy and don't really provide anything in return. We take take and take and nobody really benefits from our existence. We are the sewers of the economy.

For some reason, I think of those who derive their sole income from the poker industry. Anyone who fits into this category feel free to respond.

Do you have a job in which you provide some benefit to someone in exchange for your income (engineer, lawyer, busboy, anything, manufacture fake dog [censored], anything)

Do you volunteer in the community?

Is money and comfort the only thing you care about? Does every decision you make first require EV calculations?

What do you do to make someone else's experience this planet better off?

For some reason, I think about a lot of the people on this forum really can't answer this, but I also think there's a good chance I'll be proven wrong.

I direct this mainly at the "name-brand" players; it's also been posted in OOT.