WEBVTT 00:00:13.773 --> 00:00:17.885 Well, hi, everybody. I'm Bill Whittle and this is Afterburner. 00:00:17.885 --> 00:00:20.580 Well, there are protesters in several major American cities 00:00:20.580 --> 00:00:24.295 using their iPads at Starbucks to make Facebook and Twitter updates 00:00:24.295 --> 00:00:28.381 on the evils of corporations, and you don't know whether to laugh or cry, honestly. 00:00:28.381 --> 00:00:32.234 What we're seeing here, I think, are the self-esteem movement's chickens 00:00:32.234 --> 00:00:36.844 coming home to roost. These kids are upset because the $100,000 of debt 00:00:36.844 --> 00:00:40.223 they took on in order to get their degree in Bitterness Studies isn't paying off 00:00:40.223 --> 00:00:45.576 with a six-figure job and a car and full benefits at an organic farm collective. 00:00:45.576 --> 00:00:47.979 I feel genuinely sorry for these people, I really do. 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. 00:00:53.018 --> 00:00:56.544 You know, if you look deeply into human history you'll see that every civilization 00:00:56.544 --> 00:01:00.807 collapses the same way. They're not overrun by barbarians. That happens later. 00:01:00.807 --> 00:01:03.768 No, they fail because of their success. 00:01:03.768 --> 00:01:07.368 Prosperity makes them lazy and breeds a sense of entitlement. 00:01:07.368 --> 00:01:11.348 They're trapped under the asymptote. Let me show you what I mean. 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. 00:01:16.423 --> 00:01:18.973 You work hard, and the quality of your life improves. 00:01:18.973 --> 00:01:23.074 Every day, things not only get better, they get better faster. 00:01:23.074 --> 00:01:27.403 But then something happens. The prosperity curve becomes asymptotic. 00:01:27.403 --> 00:01:32.743 Things still get better, but by smaller and smaller and smaller amounts as time goes on. 00:01:32.743 --> 00:01:35.972 These people don't know what they're protesting, but I do. 00:01:35.972 --> 00:01:39.341 They're protesting the fact that they've never been hungry, never been cold, 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 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 00:01:48.816 --> 00:01:53.284 for any of it. They were born into a level of prosperity so pervasive 00:01:53.284 --> 00:01:58.438 that the very idea of a difference in prosperity became vulgar and disgusting to them. 00:01:58.438 --> 00:02:02.283 These kids couldn't even become relatively more or less prosperous on the soccer field, 00:02:02.283 --> 00:02:06.067 because having winners means having losers, and these precious snowflakes 00:02:06.067 --> 00:02:08.944 have been told how wonderful and unique they are their entire lives, 00:02:08.944 --> 00:02:12.137 and everyone has always come in first place. 00:02:12.137 --> 00:02:17.515 Only now, they're out in the real world. And the real world keeps score. 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. 00:02:23.146 --> 00:02:24.573 I really believe I could. 00:02:24.573 --> 00:02:29.474 Because at its core, this isn't about corporations or the economy or what they paid 00:02:29.474 --> 00:02:33.942 for their bad education. What it's really about is ingratitude. 00:02:33.942 --> 00:02:38.075 Ingratitude and entitlement and an utter lack of perspective. 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. 00:02:43.844 --> 00:02:47.144 You see, to cure this sickness, I would take from every single American 00:02:47.144 --> 00:02:51.139 between the ages of 10 and 60, say, 1 percent of their life every year. 00:02:51.139 --> 00:02:55.142 There are 365 days in a year, so 1 percent of that is 3.6 days, 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, 00:02:59.135 --> 00:03:04.057 I would force everyone to live out in the woods in a cabin. 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. 00:03:06.977 --> 00:03:09.645 I'd make people carry their own water up from the river -- 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. 00:03:12.612 --> 00:03:16.541 Recovering from amoebic dysentery will be part of your education. 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 -- 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. 00:03:24.575 --> 00:03:29.183 And, like most modern Americans, I have a soft spot for little furry animals. 00:03:29.183 --> 00:03:34.244 But I would make people trap and kill and skin them in order to stay alive. 00:03:34.244 --> 00:03:35.835 That goes for chickens and fish as well. 00:03:35.835 --> 00:03:40.142 You see, reality can be ugly and bloody and horrible. 00:03:40.142 --> 00:03:42.905 And that's something that those protesters have been protected from their entire lives, 00:03:42.905 --> 00:03:46.169 but not any more. Play time is over now. 00:03:46.169 --> 00:03:49.941 Now, I think that after three and a half days -- days spent working hard, gathering food, 00:03:49.941 --> 00:03:53.391 chopping wood and carrying water, nighttimes spent with no iPad, 00:03:53.391 --> 00:03:56.837 no smartphone, no wi-fi, no DVDs or XBoxes -- 00:03:56.837 --> 00:04:01.221 I think that would be just enough to make people like this appreciate the fact 00:04:01.221 --> 00:04:04.384 that there are people out there who will do these things for you. 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 00:04:10.573 --> 00:04:14.055 that there are groups of people willing to pump and purify your water, 00:04:14.055 --> 00:04:18.441 provide endless and affordable electrical power so you can be 72 degrees all the time, 00:04:18.441 --> 00:04:22.403 that there are people who will kill, clean, cook, package and deliver food 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 -- 00:04:25.537 --> 00:04:29.242 and that these groups of people who provide these services are called corporations 00:04:29.242 --> 00:04:34.118 who feed their own selves and their own families by doing these ugly, difficult, unpleasant things 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. 00:04:39.668 --> 00:04:43.267 Not for three and a half days. They do it every day. They're called farmers. 00:04:43.267 --> 00:04:47.234 And they work for corporations called Kraft and Green Giant and Monsanto. 00:04:47.234 --> 00:04:50.336 You should be grateful and you should thank them. 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 00:04:54.167 --> 00:04:58.765 the size of automobile transmissions in 60 mile an hour winds to bring up the oil 00:04:58.765 --> 00:05:02.572 to charge your iPad and run your AC and your XBox and your Prius. 00:05:02.572 --> 00:05:06.728 They work for companies called Exxon and Shell and BP and you should be grateful 00:05:06.728 --> 00:05:09.771 and you should thank them. 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.