Have you tried visiting the board? I'm not sure you have. That because if you did you would have seen by now that there are some members who even post on that board some constructive post that earn a good number merit.
And it's pretty active, too, as far as I can tell from my infrequent visits.
My experience with other discussion forums has been that pretty much every one has had an off-topic section or at least a politics & society one, because members of forums (but not this one so much) tend to get to know one another and sometimes like to talk about topics that don't pertain to whatever the focus of the forum is. If sections like the two I just mentioned didn't exist, you'd probably see a ton of posts veering way off-topic into things like religion, politics, and so forth.
I get the feeling that OP thinks bitcointalk is where people make money online and nothing else, but that could just be my jadedness.