LeBron James's Genius Shows Why There's No Retirement-Savings Crisis

In a recent Wall Street Journal piece by sportswriter Ben Cohen, LeBron James’s on-court genius was described in exciting fashion. James is a basketball savant. Cohen reported that James "has a photographic memory, that he knows the other team’s plays, that he can see into the future.”

Exciting about James is how much he respects basketball smarts in others. Looking back to when he was still a Cleveland Cavalier, and leading his team against the Golden State Warriors in the NBA Finals, James spoke in awe to reporters about the “collective intelligence” of Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green on the basketball court. In the NBA everyone’s athletic. What sets the best apart from the rest is their basketball knowledge.  

Thinking about the Lakers more broadly, along with every other NBA team (realistically college too), readers can rest assured that they’re increasingly stacked with savants of varying types. Think nutritional geniuses, sleep experts, weight trainers, cardio trainers, offensive and defensive analysts, plus in consideration of how the NBA regular season is 82 games, and playoffs can amount to 26 more, there are “load management” experts. All of this leaves out the various savants who showcase their unique skills in the front offices of teams.

Specialization is a beautiful thing, and it more and more defines the modern existence in developed parts of the world. Whereas 175 years ago the vast majority of human endeavor was directed toward the creation of food, in modern times it’s increasingly the norm for individuals to do that which showcases their unique skills and intelligence.

So what drove this beautiful evolution? Robots, to be specific. Before the back hoe, tractor and fertilizer, food was all that most had time to produce; albeit not very well. That’s why people were so much shorter, skinnier, and lived shorter lives. Food was much less than plentiful, and its supply was never a sure thing.

Then robots of the primitive variety like the aforementioned back hoe, tractor and fertilizer came along and destroyed farming jobs in staggering amounts. Think about that. The work done by the majority of the world’s population was erased with great speed.

Were people put in breadlines? Not at all. They logically flourished. Thanks to technology leading to soaring food abundance, individuals who formerly had their talents suffocated by backbreaking and endless farm work were freed to pursue work more commensurate with their talents. As a result, talented people freed from farms went into medicine in order to cure disease, into transportation in order to create cars and airplanes, into technology to create computers and the internet, plus became math teachers, chefs, personal trainers, and all manner of other work forms that formerly had no use thanks to a feverish global focus on the creation of food.

So what does all of this have to do with LeBron James, the NBA, and the likely truth that there’s no retirement savings crisis? It’s all explained by James’s ability, along with those in the world of basketball, to increasingly pursue career paths that are so thoroughly commensurate with their individual genius.

Thanks to relentless technological progress since the back hoe, tractor and fertilizer, more and more of the work done by humans has been automated. The latter didn’t put them out of work anymore than did that which freed people from farms. Instead, the persistent automation propelled them into greater and greater specialization. Yes, jobs like sleep trainer, team nutritionist and pet nutritionist are a consequence of the automation of past forms of work, and the resulting prosperity that results from erasing the past.

Looking ahead, it’s said that automation is about to go on overdrive on the way to the rapid erasure of much of the work done today. If so, brilliant. The extra hands of the automated variety won’t render us jobless as much as they’ll make work exponentially more enjoyable as the myriad difficulties that come with the work of today are erased by machines expertly powered by brilliant humans.

And with the humdrum, repetitive and awful aspects of work having been erased by technology, human beings will attain specialization on levels previously unimagined. The number of people described in the way that James is described today as a basketball player will soar, and with that ultimately billions of people working diligently to delay retirement. Indeed, why retire if work is an expression of your individual genius?

All of this must be considered in light of the hand wringing among deep thinkers about “insufficient retirement savings” among workers, along with attempts by the political class to increase incentives among workers to save more for retirement. They miss by a mile.

They do simply because a market signal is just that. Assuming less aggressive saving on the part of workers for retirement, the presumed lack is assuredly a signal that tomorrow is more and more taking place today as workers do what they enjoy, and which elevates them. If they’re saving less for retirement it’s likely because they have no plans to retire. Workers were arguably more aggressive about saving in the past given the basic truth that work didn’t as much reflect their individual genius, and as a consequence they wanted to be able to stop working as soon as they were able.

Not anymore. As my 2018 book The End of Work argues, the work of today and tomorrow is increasingly a reflection of passion, as opposed to a necessary thing. People get up excited about work, and automation will only add to the excitement.

Thanks to these happy developments, “retirement” and “saving for retirement” will soon enough have dated meaning. Le Bron James’s on-court genius helps explain why.