And it really ties the room together! I am certain no one will pull and steal it.

At that point, they needed to be pretty old. It stopped being Lemberg in 1918, and was Lviv, UdSSR until 1991.

Though i guess 73 minimum is not that old, come to think of it.

My core definition would be that if your main job is making sure that you (or someone else) gets a bigger part of the pie without increasing the pie, then your job is pointless. Basically, goon jobs. Tradionally that would mean beating people up, nowadays we have financial traders and lawyers who do stuff like that.

Edit: In your examples, the people produce something useful. Athletes and actors provide fun for other people. That fun wouldn't exist if the job wouldn't be done.

The options trader does not produce anything, they just try to make their part of the pie bigger at the cost of other people.

Not everyone is able to do all of those things, but everyone is able to do something useful.

And yeah, i agree that it is a core problem that people who play pointless games get rewarded more than people who do real work.

It is not really about hate, and more about sadness.

Imagine if all the people who do pointless bullshit like this were doing stuff that actually benefits society. OP could have been an engineer, a scientist, a nurse, a teacher, a doctor, a dogwalker, a prostitute, a construction worker,...

Instead they are playing a pointless negative-sum game with the goal of winning at it. Because that is rewarded more by our system than doing useful work.

This is basically like professional poker, but even more stupid.

So many people are wasting their lives doing this pointless shit that doesn't help anyone in any way.