You sound like Prometheus who brought the fire to humankind.
First of all online poker is a entertainment platform. People pay for fun at such platforms. They pay twice - with their money and with their time.
The money question is quite interesting, let's say for example PokerStars - the platform was sold once for approx 5billions then later it was sold again for 6billions. If you calculate all profit of this platform from the rake, add +50% then it will be something like ~200millions per year. Lets not forget about advertisement budget, salaries, giveaways, servers and other expenses. But even if it's +200Mln/year... it was bought for 6Bln, so it's 30 years to return investments?
The other question is people paying with their time. This one is more interesting.
Let's calculate a 100 year human life in hours? 24*365*100 = 876K hours is a 100 years long human life...
Let's not focus on individual humans, you can check your personal data if you want to, i would like to focus on global picture - it's more interesting.
Since it's hard to calculate such neverending process across all poker platforms, it's easier to calculate some other entertainment event completed not long time ago or still running but much slower than at the start. For example some Hollywood movie? Avatar? Titanic?
Ok here goes, let's say that in total - legally and illegally over time Avatar was watched by 2 billions. Let's say that duration of the movie is 2 hours. I'm not trying to be exact, just throwing some numbers that might be close to reality, just to calculate and compare.
So we have 2 billions * 2hours = 4 000 000 000 human hours. People spent 4 bln hours to see the drama of blue aliens. Did they gain something useful? Something new, something that can help them in their life? Nope. But 4bln human hours have been spent.
Now lets get back to 100 year human life. 876K hours...
4bln / 0.9mln = approx 4.5K
So let's say you're a objective thinking observer, let's say you're a alien from another planet. From objective point of view it looks like thus movie has simply erased 4500 human lives, like they have never existed. Ofc it's just some calculations, there was no victims, just 2 hours from each persons life -that's all. You still have another 875998 hours left... But is it really true? I mean what is true and what is truth? Truth is that not each person will live to 100 years, also it's total time, not effective time, cause 1/3 of each life will be sleeping hours, laso you take bath, go to toilet and so on. How much time has passed and how much time each person has left? is it really 2 billions or during 10 years the number is maybe x5 times more... It's just 1 movie, some people watch them all, including TV... What about poker? some people spent 2 hours, others 12... per day... each day... How many hours in total? Who knows
Too many questions, but my point is that it's a "free marke"t, it's so called and so much desired "freedom". If you belive in it ofc... And in such "freedom" each individual is free to choose how to spend his life. Bots or no bots - it does not matter. You have to OBJECTIVELY think about how you spend your time and money. If you're playing online poker - DO KEEP IN MIND THAT YOU ARE SITTING INFRONT OF YOUR MONITOR AND YOU ARE WATCHING PIXELS. Providers of these pixels can do whatever they want, there also might be middleman, between you and your provider (dealer) of pixels that entertain you. If you start do dig deeper in this scheme - you might not like it, just keep in mind that you are paying for pixels with your time and money, you might like or dislike some of the pixels - it won't change grand scheme of things, because you're not a creator. you're a customer or consumer, you're the one who has 2 options 1) don't use offered service or 2) pay for it with your money and time. By the way you've just paid me with your time. Where is my profit?
