Ok, thanks for all the replies everyone. Kind of felt dorkish posting about these thoughts and I wasn’t sure how they would go over. I should have known that you all kick ass and would be cool… or we are all dorks. I prefer the former. And I hope that I didn’t come across as a condescending morally superior son-of-a-bitch. I hate assholes like that. At the end of the day, I figure that we are all trying to be the best person that each of us can be (whatever that means) and often for me that means thinking about if pursuing my poker interests in the best use of my time.
The sports analogy doesn’t work for many reasons. The two most obvious are that the athletes on the losing team still get paid and every sport (including boxing, ultimate fighting, etc) have built in rules to protect those that participate.
Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned the whole capitalism bit. I brought it up in an attempt to head off a discussion that wasn’t germane to what I was trying to say. But I failed to make myself clear, sorry. What I really wanted to say was, yes, in many regards poker can be thought of an almost pure form of capitalism. But that isn’t an argument that concerns itself with whether it is morally correct.
The charity thing is a good idea, one that I already pursue. And I recommend others to as well. But it still doesn’t get to the issue. So far I can sum the arguments that poker is morally neutral as extensions of the concept of free will. I wonder if there is any other, possibly more nuanced, reason?
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