1 00:00:13,773 --> 00:00:17,885 Well, hi, everybody. I'm Bill Whittle and this is Afterburner. 2 00:00:17,885 --> 00:00:20,580 Well, there are protesters in several major American cities 3 00:00:20,580 --> 00:00:24,295 using their iPads at Starbucks to make Facebook and Twitter updates 4 00:00:24,295 --> 00:00:28,381 on the evils of corporations, and you don't know whether to laugh or cry, honestly. 5 00:00:28,381 --> 00:00:32,234 What we're seeing here, I think, are the self-esteem movement's chickens 6 00:00:32,234 --> 00:00:36,844 coming home to roost. These kids are upset because the $100,000 of debt 7 00:00:36,844 --> 00:00:40,223 they took on in order to get their degree in Bitterness Studies isn't paying off 8 00:00:40,223 --> 00:00:45,576 with a six-figure job and a car and full benefits at an organic farm collective. 9 00:00:45,576 --> 00:00:47,979 I feel genuinely sorry for these people, I really do. 10 00:00:47,979 --> 00:00:53,018 These are people that are born under the asymptote. I'll get to that in just a second. 11 00:00:53,018 --> 00:00:56,544 You know, if you look deeply into human history you'll see that every civilization 12 00:00:56,544 --> 00:01:00,807 collapses the same way. They're not overrun by barbarians. That happens later. 13 00:01:00,807 --> 00:01:03,768 No, they fail because of their success. 14 00:01:03,768 --> 00:01:07,368 Prosperity makes them lazy and breeds a sense of entitlement. 15 00:01:07,368 --> 00:01:11,348 They're trapped under the asymptote. Let me show you what I mean. 16 00:01:11,348 --> 00:01:16,423 Here's an exponential curve. Now, this is what life looks like for a growing and healthy civilization. 17 00:01:16,423 --> 00:01:18,973 You work hard, and the quality of your life improves. 18 00:01:18,973 --> 00:01:23,074 Every day, things not only get better, they get better faster. 19 00:01:23,074 --> 00:01:27,403 But then something happens. The prosperity curve becomes asymptotic. 20 00:01:27,403 --> 00:01:32,743 Things still get better, but by smaller and smaller and smaller amounts as time goes on. 21 00:01:32,743 --> 00:01:35,972 These people don't know what they're protesting, but I do. 22 00:01:35,972 --> 00:01:39,341 They're protesting the fact that they've never been hungry, never been cold, 23 00:01:39,341 --> 00:01:43,638 never been without TV and air conditioning and a car, they've always had a video game console 24 00:01:43,638 --> 00:01:48,816 and a laptop and a smartphone and they never EVER had to do any long, hard, real work 25 00:01:48,816 --> 00:01:53,284 for any of it. They were born into a level of prosperity so pervasive 26 00:01:53,284 --> 00:01:58,438 that the very idea of a difference in prosperity became vulgar and disgusting to them. 27 00:01:58,438 --> 00:02:02,283 These kids couldn't even become relatively more or less prosperous on the soccer field, 28 00:02:02,283 --> 00:02:06,067 because having winners means having losers, and these precious snowflakes 29 00:02:06,067 --> 00:02:08,944 have been told how wonderful and unique they are their entire lives, 30 00:02:08,944 --> 00:02:12,137 and everyone has always come in first place. 31 00:02:12,137 --> 00:02:17,515 Only now, they're out in the real world. And the real world keeps score. 32 00:02:17,515 --> 00:02:23,146 You know, I could cure this asymptotic disease. I could stop the rise and fall of civilizations. 33 00:02:23,146 --> 00:02:24,573 I really believe I could. 34 00:02:24,573 --> 00:02:29,474 Because at its core, this isn't about corporations or the economy or what they paid 35 00:02:29,474 --> 00:02:33,942 for their bad education. What it's really about is ingratitude. 36 00:02:33,942 --> 00:02:38,075 Ingratitude and entitlement and an utter lack of perspective. 37 00:02:38,075 --> 00:02:43,844 So, I'd provide some perspective, and I'm afraid I'd have to do it by force. 38 00:02:43,844 --> 00:02:47,144 You see, to cure this sickness, I would take from every single American 39 00:02:47,144 --> 00:02:51,139 between the ages of 10 and 60, say, 1 percent of their life every year. 40 00:02:51,139 --> 00:02:55,142 There are 365 days in a year, so 1 percent of that is 3.6 days, 41 00:02:55,142 --> 00:02:59,135 so we'll just round it down, we'll say three and a half days. And during those three and a half days, 42 00:02:59,135 --> 00:03:04,057 I would force everyone to live out in the woods in a cabin. 43 00:03:04,057 --> 00:03:06,977 I wouldn't make anyone chop wood -- if you want to shiver through three nights, that's your business. 44 00:03:06,977 --> 00:03:09,645 I'd make people carry their own water up from the river -- 45 00:03:09,645 --> 00:03:12,612 hey, if you don't want to go to the trouble to boil it, be my guest. 46 00:03:12,612 --> 00:03:16,541 Recovering from amoebic dysentery will be part of your education. 47 00:03:16,541 --> 00:03:20,453 I'd make everybody grow and harvest their own food, or dig up roots or collect berries -- 48 00:03:20,453 --> 00:03:24,575 or not. You can sit and complain about it and not eat for three and a half days if you'd prefer. 49 00:03:24,575 --> 00:03:29,183 And, like most modern Americans, I have a soft spot for little furry animals. 50 00:03:29,183 --> 00:03:34,244 But I would make people trap and kill and skin them in order to stay alive. 51 00:03:34,244 --> 00:03:35,835 That goes for chickens and fish as well. 52 00:03:35,835 --> 00:03:40,142 You see, reality can be ugly and bloody and horrible. 53 00:03:40,142 --> 00:03:42,905 And that's something that those protesters have been protected from their entire lives, 54 00:03:42,905 --> 00:03:46,169 but not any more. Play time is over now. 55 00:03:46,169 --> 00:03:49,941 Now, I think that after three and a half days -- days spent working hard, gathering food, 56 00:03:49,941 --> 00:03:53,391 chopping wood and carrying water, nighttimes spent with no iPad, 57 00:03:53,391 --> 00:03:56,837 no smartphone, no wi-fi, no DVDs or XBoxes -- 58 00:03:56,837 --> 00:04:01,221 I think that would be just enough to make people like this appreciate the fact 59 00:04:01,221 --> 00:04:04,384 that there are people out there who will do these things for you. 60 00:04:04,384 --> 00:04:10,573 I think three and a half days out there every year for 50 years would make you very grateful 61 00:04:10,573 --> 00:04:14,055 that there are groups of people willing to pump and purify your water, 62 00:04:14,055 --> 00:04:18,441 provide endless and affordable electrical power so you can be 72 degrees all the time, 63 00:04:18,441 --> 00:04:22,403 that there are people who will kill, clean, cook, package and deliver food 64 00:04:22,403 --> 00:04:25,537 so that you don't have to see the blood or the dirt -- all of those things -- 65 00:04:25,537 --> 00:04:29,242 and that these groups of people who provide these services are called corporations 66 00:04:29,242 --> 00:04:34,118 who feed their own selves and their own families by doing these ugly, difficult, unpleasant things 67 00:04:34,118 --> 00:04:39,668 for you and charging more than it costs. There are people out there doing that right now. 68 00:04:39,668 --> 00:04:43,267 Not for three and a half days. They do it every day. They're called farmers. 69 00:04:43,267 --> 00:04:47,234 And they work for corporations called Kraft and Green Giant and Monsanto. 70 00:04:47,234 --> 00:04:50,336 You should be grateful and you should thank them. 71 00:04:50,336 --> 00:04:54,167 And there are people out in the Gulf of Mexico and the North Sea, wrestling with steel beams 72 00:04:54,167 --> 00:04:58,765 the size of automobile transmissions in 60 mile an hour winds to bring up the oil 73 00:04:58,765 --> 00:05:02,572 to charge your iPad and run your AC and your XBox and your Prius. 74 00:05:02,572 --> 00:05:06,728 They work for companies called Exxon and Shell and BP and you should be grateful 75 00:05:06,728 --> 00:05:09,771 and you should thank them. 76 00:05:09,771 --> 00:05:17,094 Now, three and a half days is all I'd need. What those protesters need is to grow up.