What does a professional gambler contribute to society?

[pico]

nice thread.

i think once you start to categorize activities into "useful" and "useless", then you're heading down a very dangerous road. reno and data brought up nazi regime. i spend couple of semesters studing the Weimar Republic and continuation of the great war. hitler also thought gambler as degenerates. in his mind, modern artists, mentally retarded, and other anti-social people are all part of "social degenerates". well, we all know what happens next.

i prefer not to categorize people's professions as "useful" or "useless"...like brentcrude said, 80% of the jobs out there can be pretty much argued useless. what is truely useful?...probably just farmers and doctors. you can just argue that all we need is food and health...other commercial product are just crap.

i believe there is nothing wrong being a gambler. gambling does serve a social purpose...it satifies your mental needs. some people fulfil their mental need by reading a book, watching tv....for me, i like to pick a side and place a wager and get entertained for 3 hours. think about it, gambling has a negative rep because those people who do it in excess. anything in excess have negative consequences. let's use reading a book for example. if you read too much, you pretty much become a brain-dead bookworm with zero social skills....how many people think that is a good thing? if you over farm, then the land become a dust bowl (anyone from oklahoma?)

so it is pretty hard to answer the original queston, because everyone's perception of "contribution" is different. in my mind, we should kill all the lawyers, bankers, and insurance agents...some people think those professions are essential. so the original question is only good for discussion, but no can really answer it.

[Data]

I do find your points thought provoking

Thank you. For me, that is the best compliment to receive.

and somewhat original. And I surely agree that "thinking about and revising your core beliefs is a tall order".
You say that fairness necessitates the authority to enforce it. But I have to say that any society including an Anarchistic society has to have some kind of rules of fairness that everyone agrees on or at least tolerates.

I think that is impossible to have everyone agree on something.

In our capitalist society we have same rules that are indeed very strictly enforced. So we all have concepts of fairness, they're just skewed in various ways.
Personally, I believe a more equitable society avoids unnecessary strife. A society that excludes and marginalizes many is a bad one. I don't believe the Nazis were staunch supporters of equality.

Equality is certainly a relevant idea to this discussion but I am unsure why you started talking about it at this point. Since you did, here is my take. There are two, again, opposite approaches to this, equal rights and as a result equal opportunity or instituted equality. The latter is one of the communists' favorite ideas. How this approaches play out economically? Historically, the first ensures progress and prosperity, the second, stagnation and poverty.

But anyway, what made the Nazis infamous and despised (rightfully so) was their aggression and abuse of human rights. And when I put it that way it sort of resembles another famous nation which is very anti-socialist.

Right, the desire to rule/unite/conquer the world is common for totalitarian ideologies, terror as well. I suppose we agree that a country/religion should mind their own business and not teach the others how to live. And, if we do agree on that I suggest to use this same approach on a smaller scale where it comes to individuals. "Just mind your own business and do not tell me how to live my life", does that sound familiar?

What every member of society must agree on is that killing and stealing is prohibited. Forgive me that this all is highly unoriginal and very well addressed by the Founding Fathers. I like these ideas because they promote freedom and do not lead to mass killings. The sad reality of the current political spectrum in the US is that these ideas are largely forgotten and none of the two leading parties is willing to support the very principles this country was built upon.