The End of Work

by John Tamny

  Further applying the above to restaurants and the business itself, the growing economy plainly signals the rise of an increasingly credible restaurant industry as the productive focus on what they do best, while leaving things like cooking to others. This kind of wealth also allows individuals to concentrate on what they do best, what the nineteenth-century economist David Ricardo called “comparative advantage.” Each of us does what he’s good at while “importing” everything else from others. The fruits of one’s labor are exchangeable for everything one needs.

  The restaurant boom has only just begun, and with it, the opportunity for those with intelligence in the kitchen and outside of it to do what they love. Meyer may have explained the future of restaurants best with his observation about his early days as a restaurant owner. He wrote that “I had always noticed how many servers seemed to apologize for their work, with remarks like: ‘I’m actually an actor. I’m just waiting tables until I land a real job.’”24

  If economic growth proves abundant in the future, waiters will proudly wear their work on their sleeves as the path to something even greater in the field. Better yet, those who say they’re waiting tables in hopes of becoming actors won’t be smirked at either.

  Several years ago, Millie, the thirteen-year-old niece of a friend in London, wrote to me:

  I have been toying with ideas for my future whilst I’m on half term and have come to the conclusion that I want to be an actress. What do you think of this idea? I think mummy thinks it’s just a phase, but is beginning to realise I am serious!

  Time will tell if Millie is serious about acting, but her mother’s reaction was perfectly understandable. Millie’s father is a successful investment banker in the city, and her parents were spending quite a lot of money to send her to one of England’s top schools, with an eye on her attending a university of the Oxbridge variety. While the list of well-educated actors and actresses is long, acting has not always been viewed as a serious profession. As Lady Uckfield condescendingly asks young Simon Russell in Julian Fellowes’s novel Snobs, “And will you always be an actor?”25

  Apart from its want of professional cachet, acting is an extremely difficult field in which to achieve success. There are only so many roles in television, the movies, and the theater and so many people seeking them. Millie’s mother’s skepticism may be warranted, but it’s also a bit dated. Let me explain.

  The actor Roger Moore, who achieved fame in the 1960s television show The Saint, recalls seeing his “first TV pictures on a tiny box with a fuzzy little screen” in 1939. It was “so exciting to gather around it waiting for the valves to warm up and seeing the little picture emerge.”26 It was exciting because it was scarce. The quality of the picture, let alone the quality of the entertainment, was almost secondary.

  By the 1970s, television ownership was nearly universal. Yet at the same time, there wasn’t much choice for viewers, even in the United States. There were the three networks—ABC, NBC, and CBS—there was PBS, launched in 1970, and in big markets there were a few local channels that offered mostly local news, along with re-runs of shows that had previously aired on the networks. While a number of well-regarded TV programs emerged in the seventies—shows like M*A*S*H, Mary Tyler Moore, All in the Family, and The Jeffersons—television was still somewhat barren.

  During that decade, Rob Lowe got into acting. His first network television show, A New Kind of Family, was released by ABC in 1979 in the “death slot” against ratings king 60 Minutes. The results, Lowe writes, were predictable: “They crushed us. I mean it was a bloodletting.”27 The second episode of A New Kind of Family had fourteen million viewers, a sign that the series was doomed. But as Lowe points out, “today any network would kill to have our numbers. In 1979, if fourteen million people watched you, you were at death’s door. Today, a huge smash like Two and a Half Men averages about that” number.28 A New Kind of Family lasted eleven episodes.

  Today, television is a completely different world. If one of the Big Three networks doesn’t want you, dozens of other producers might. Compare the story of A New Kind of Family with that of Mad Men, a show that nearly died before it was born but recovered to enjoy a legendary eight-year run. Matthew Weiner labored over the pilot script for his masterpiece for seven years. HBO turned it down without so much as a phone call to say no. Luckily, the AMC cable network picked up what no one else wanted.29

  Weiner’s experience is common. The Sopranos is broadly viewed as one of the greatest television productions ever, but it too nearly died in the cradle. ABC, CBS, and NBC all turned it down. “Everywhere, the answer was no,” writes Brett Martin in his history of the creative revolution sparked by cable television. “The universe of Dr. Melfi and Paulie Walnuts and Vesuvio and Bada Bing! seemed destined to vanish in the usual atrophic way.”30 HBO ultimately bit, however, and the rest is history. But was HBO infallible? It turns out it wasn’t.

  When Vince Gilligan brought Breaking Bad to HBO, a network known for high-quality television, they “never gave [him] an answer of any kind.”31 FX, likewise known for its critically acclaimed shows (Nip/Tuck, Justified, and The Americans, to name three), passed on it as well, opting instead for the eminently forgettable Dirt.32

  The emergence of these cable networks is a result of the commoditization of television itself. With economic growth, former luxuries become everyday consumer products as entrepreneurs and businesses take what’s expensive and figure out ways to make it cheap. When Roger Moore was a kid, televisions were exotic. By the time Rob Lowe began acting professionally, they were in every home, but often only one, which the whole family gathered around in the living room. Now they’re everywhere.

  In 2000, a fifty-inch flat-screen TV retailed for twenty thousand dollars.33 Today, a much better fifty-inch flat screen can be purchased on Amazon.com for a little more than three hundred dollars. Most homes have one now, but is anyone watching it? Chances are you’ll find each member of the family plugged into his own device—smart phone, tablet, laptop—watching his own programming on a miniature screen.

  With all the screens and all the channels, producers, directors, and actors no longer have to curry favor with the three major networks. In the 2016 Emmy Awards, just about every nominee represented a show that was not a network property. The nominees for best actor in a drama, for example, were Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek (USA Network), Matthew Rhys from The Americans (FX), Liev Schreiber (Ray Donovan—Showtime), Bob Odenkirk (Better Call Saul—AMC), Kevin Spacey (House of Cards—Netflix), and Kyle Chandler (Bloodline—Netflix).

  The nominees for best actress in a drama included Claire Danes (Homeland—Showtime), Keri Russell (The Americans—FX), Robin Wright (House of Cards—Netflix), Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black—BBC America), Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder—ABC), and Taraji P. Henson (Empire—Fox). Of the twelve nominees in that major category, only two were from the four major networks.

  Of the seven nominees for best comedy, just two were network shows—Modern Family and Black-ish (both ABC properties). It was even worse in the category of best drama. Other than PBS’s Downton Abbey, none of the shows nominated aired on the traditional networks.34

  We’re seeing with television what we saw with restaurants: as our society becomes more affluent, stimulating the demand for what were once luxuries—like high-quality television you have to pay for—producers will emerge to meet that demand, catering to all ages and tastes. As New York magazine observes, “flashy TV projects roll out with almost numbing regularity now.”35 There’s more to quality TV, in other words, than PBS. “Between 2009 and 2015, the number of scripted shows nearly doubled,” and Netflix intends to produce six hundred hours of original television backed by $5 billion earmarked for new programs and acquisitions of others.36

  What’s even more interesting is that the Emmy nominees of 2016 didn’t come only from actual television stations. Netflix, which began as an online DVD rental service, produces shows like House of Cards, Bloodline, and Unbreakable
Kimmy Schmidt and garnered the third-most nominations. Amazon started as a book retailer in the 1990s; in 2016 it received sixteen Emmy nominations.37 In 2013 when House of Cards premiered, only twenty-four original shows were streamed on the Internet. By 2017, that number had increased to 117.38

  For actors and everyone else involved in producing this tidal wave of programming, business is booming. And the boom is not confined to Hollywood. Vancouver, a historically popular venue for TV production, is so overrun with shows that “pop-up” stages have been erected all over town to fulfill demand, and in Atlanta television producers find it hard to give crew members even a day off.39

  What explains this revolution in entertainment? Look at your mobile phone. Back in 1989, a Tandy 5000 desktop computer—touted as the “most powerful computer ever!”—cost $8,499, monitor and mouse not included.40 The smartphone in your pocket today would have qualified as a supercomputer then—if they could have built it, which they couldn’t.

  The technological advances make programs easier to consume, of course, but they also make it easier to produce, lowering the barriers to entry in the entertainment business. More directors, writers, and actors will get to pursue their passion. Millie’s interest in acting becomes more plausible by the day.

  Jay Leno retired from hosting NBC’s Tonight Show in 2013. In 2016, he unveiled Jay Leno’s Garage, a show about his love of cars and motorcycles. It began as a web-based series on NBC.com, but has since been picked up by CNBC for prime time.

  Leno was always a funnyman, but he expected to be an insurance salesman like his father and assumed his comedy act would be seen only by potential clients.41 But with the rise of comedy clubs, Leno was able to turn his passion into a career: “I watch other people and they like to go on vacation, to go out to dinner, go to athletic events. And I just write jokes. And it’s seven days a week and it’s fine. It’s just that you have to have the stamina to do it. You just do it every day. And I like it.”42 Absolutely.

  Jerry Seinfeld discovered he was funny at the age of eight. Eating milk and cookies with a friend on Long Island, Seinfeld said something so funny that the friend spit the milk and cookies back into Seinfeld’s hair. He decided then and there that, “I would like to do this professionally.”43 Comedy reinforced Seinfeld’s talents. Thirteen years later Seinfeld sat with his father on a bench at Eighty-first Street and Central Park West and told him that he would be going into stand-up, a declaration quite a bit more outlandish in the 1970s than Meyer’s announcement that he was going into restaurants in the 1980s. But the world was changing, and Seinfeld’s father seemingly knew it. He said he wished he could have gone into comedy himself.44 Seinfeld père understood that the jobs of yesterday weren’t predictors of the jobs of tomorrow. He gave his blessing.

  Not everyone can be Jay Leno or Jerry Seinfeld. But those who love comedy (Boston-based Emerson College now offers a degree in “Comedic Arts”45) will have more opportunities to showcase their skills. The only barriers nowadays are internal. Will those who want to entertain work hard enough to make it happen? Nothing is ever easy, but it’s easier to work hard if you’re doing something that you love. Rob Lowe’s advice to young actors is “Say yes to any opportunity to grow and/or do good work. You never know where it will lead or who may be paying attention.”46 The possibility of being discovered grows by the day. Acting and entertaining are very serious for those who can’t imagine doing anything else.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Abundant Profits Make Possible the Work That Isn’t

  “[P]eople give away more money when they have more money.”1

  —James Q. Wilson

  In 1997, Roberto C. Goizueta died after a battle with lung cancer. The front-page story about him in the Wall Street Journal noted that the legendary CEO of the Coca-Cola Company had little interest in “high-profile civic involvement” in his adopted city of Atlanta, Georgia, but “thanks to his 16 years of focusing strictly on business, many a civic cause here is better off.”2

  For Goizueta, his every work day was all about attaining profits for the owners of Coca-Cola. He delivered. Coke was valued at $4 billion when he took over as CEO in 1981. Its market capitalization had reached $145 billion by the time he died in 1997.3

  The surge in the value of Coca-Cola has had an enormous effect on Atlanta, where the company is based. Bill Warren, a pediatrician, inherited Coke shares, and the rise in their value gave him the means to close his medical practice in the suburbs and volunteer at an inner-city health clinic serving the poor.

  Thanks to a gift of Coke stock, Emory University’s endowment grew from $250 million in 1981 to $3.8 billion the year of Goizueta’s death. The Wall Street Journal observed, “Finding a building on the Emory campus that doesn’t bear the name of a Coke figure is a trick: Locals half-jokingly refer to the school as Coca-Cola U,” and added, “Emory has built facilities, boosted research, offered scholarships and endowed professorships and expanded programs” largely because of an endowment massively expanded by the success of one company.4

  In 1980, the Atlanta-based Robert W. Woodruff, Joseph P. Whitehead, Lettie Pate Evans, and Lettie Pate Whitehead foundations gave less than $5 million to Atlanta causes. In 1997, the four donated roughly $220 million. Among their beneficiaries were the Fernbank Museum of Natural History ($10 million to help it pay down debt) and Centennial Olympic Park, a principle venue of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. Agnes Scott College, a liberal arts institution in Atlanta, saw its endowment grow from $34 million in 1981 to $425 million. As the school’s president acknowledged, “Coca-Cola stock has kept this college alive during difficult times and now makes it thrive.”5

  The story of Coca-Cola’s success and its impressive implications for Atlanta’s charitable institutions is a reminder that profits make it possible for many needy students to attend college, for others to attain medical care that otherwise would be too costly, and for quite a few others to choose work that has nothing to do with profit-making. And all the billions that have gone to charity because of the soft-drink maker’s success will pale in comparison to the giving of the future.

  Indeed, as Fortune magazine reported in 2010, “Bill Gates, Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett are asking the nation’s billionaires to pledge at least half their net worth to charity, in their lifetime or at death.” Gates—the world’s second richest man—told Fortune that 50 percent of one’s wealth is a “low bar” for giving, while Buffett—not far behind—has pledged to give away 99 percent of his wealth.6

  Buffett has been a major donor to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which has pursued such lofty goals as eradicating global poverty and disease and empowering women to transform their lives. You can do that when wealth is abundant. The Gates Foundation employs 1,376 persons in its efforts to make the world a better place with an endowment of some $39 billion.7 And in time, the Gates Foundation will be dwarfed by other, bigger foundations.

  Indeed, in December 2015, Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, pledged to give away 99 percent of their Facebook stock to charity. Chan Zuckerberg Science, an offshoot of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC, already has $3 billion behind it and employs, the Wall Street Journal reports, “dozens of top scientists who think it is possible to cure, prevent or manage diseases by the end of the century.”8 It’s not crazy to speculate that Zuckerberg’s grandchildren might be born into a world no longer ravaged by cancer thanks to the generosity of their grandparents. When Zuckerberg and Chan made that pledge, it amounted to more than $45 billion,9 but if Facebook continues to grow as many investors expect, the gift could be many multiples of that.

  If you’re interested in a life of nonprofit work, you should consider what charitable giving will look like thirty years from now. I contend that the global economy will continue to grow. If so, it’s likely that the charitable donations of Buffett, Gates, and Zuckerberg will look small compared with future bequests. I base that prediction on the popular annual report on great w
ealth, the Forbes 400, a listing of America’s richest that began in 1982. In 2014, only thirty-four names from the original list were still among the four hundred richest Americans. While a net worth of $75 million got you into the Forbes 400 in 1982, the price of entry was $1.5 billion by 2014.10

  With the exception of a few mild recessions and the big one in 2008, the U.S. economy has grown fairly rapidly since 1982, and the ranks of the richest have changed constantly. Mark Zuckerberg was a high school student in 2000, but by 2015 he was pledging to give away tens of billions.

  If the U.S. and world economies continue to grow, the richest people in the world in 2046 will be a very different crowd from those of today. And the wealth in the hands of the superrich thirty years from now promises to be mind-boggling.

  It’s safe to say that many more billions—and probably trillions—of dollars, will be in the hands of foundations eager to fix what’s wrong with the world, making the employment possibilities for those who want to join that idealistic work promising indeed. But never forget that nonprofit institutions are an effect of broad prosperity achieved in the private sector.

  In short, for those who desire a fulfilling life of nonprofit work, extraordinary wealth creation is your best friend. The more wealth that’s produced and the more profits that are made, the more that will be available for the good works of the nonprofits.

  In the mid-2000s, Arthur C. Brooks, then a professor at Syracuse University, studied charitable giving and was astounded by what he found. For one thing, Americans are big givers. Three out of four U.S. families give to charity each year, and their giving works out to roughly 3.5 percent of their income. And since the United States is a rich country, that 3.5 percent amounts to a lot of charitable giving each year. “Private American giving could more than finance the entire annual gross domestic product (GDP) of Sweden, Norway, or Denmark,” he writes.11