Attention Worthless Generation: Give Me A Break

I haven't had a good blog rant in a while, so here it goes.

Yesterday, there was an article in the Wall Street Journal highlighting spring college commencement speakers' apologies to the Class of 2009 for causing this economic mess that they are inheriting. The speeches ranged in specific content, but most apologized for past slovenliness (my term) especially in regard to ruthless pursuit of greed and self-interest with no long-term regard of consequences. They then proceeded to essentially say, "Sorry graduates, but you're going to have to clean this mess up. That is the only avenue your ambitions can actually serve. Listen to what we say, not what we do. Maybe you can leave the world better for children, but your generation is pretty much screwed." Thanks guys, for those amazingly inspirational sentiments. I mean, it makes me want to go right out there, don my comrade uniform, and "get to work for the common good." Especially to bail out the idiots who got us here... oh wait, they don't actually want our opinion on that. No, again, they want us to listen to all their great wisdom as to how to get ourselves out of this mess.

Huh?

So, let me get this straight. The generation who is largely responsible for this idiocy now wants us to sit back and follow their orders on how to fix it? The reason being that they are now "sorry?"

I don't think so. Hell will freeze over before I listen to these buffoons. Or we'll turn into Idiocracy and I'll be executed for having an independent brain in my head. If you haven't seen the movie, you should. Poor Mike Judge has gotten so screwed over by Fox's "marketing efforts" that most people have not heard of it... but it's worth multiple viewings. (I have a tirade against Fox marketing that I will save for another day. Lets just say it is largely related to their handling of Firefly among other quality shows and movies that tank because their marketing director is one of the biggest of the aforementioned buffoons to have ever walked the entertainment planet.)

As far as I'm concerned, the Baby Boomers and Me Generation are complete wastes of space. They squandered their affluence, opportunities, and general peace in names of themselves. As a general rule, I am not at all opposed to market selfishness as I don't think there is a omniscient human (or group of humans) who can accurately dictate the actions of individuals. And even if there was, that is immoral in principle and should not be entered into by anyone who still has an iota of free conscience left in their heads. However, this generation takes selfishness to an entirely new level... to a degree that it needs its own definition to differentiate it from "good selfishness" espoused by those such as Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, and even Tocqueville when you get down to it.

Lets call it, "Self aggrandizement at the expense of all reason, morals, or social consciousness?" That's probably a little too long... Or maybe, "Denial of reality." Getting closer. However, I think what truly captures these people is simply, "Asininity."

They don't want the freedom that their parents fought, and many died, for. Why? Because freedom takes work largely through choice. You have to actively employ your brain and reason to determine whether or not a good or activity actually is in your self interest instead of just doing what you want. At the end of the day, self-interest is not supposed to be hedonism. It's very existence depends on rational choice. Lest us not forget this is the generation that produced the Summer of Love, the irrational elevation of hippieness, and general apathy... except toward green living. That they love because it only affirms the theories of their youth!

I guess the critical flaw in the way Smith is taught is there is no emphasis on the extent to which people would become lazy. Smith did address it, but it's not the primary objective unless relating it to why the free market is necessary. It also does not receive as much explicit emphasis because back in the day, lazy people perished. There was no option. Unless you were an aristocrat, but they were few and there were no Cinderella stories regardless of what Disney tells us. (Although I finally saw Wall-E and it did a great job of illustrating what happens when you don't have to work or make choices. Props to Pixar for a great film. As was Up. Absolutely fantastic, but that's for another day too.)

Today, virtually everyone is an aristocrat of old even if they technically have a job. Technology has provided us with free time previously unfathomable and enabled us to conduct more cerebral work than every before. Thanks college! Both of these things are great when used well.

However, when one insists on living in one's head more than interacting with the world, bad things happen. You lose your connection to society, people, and general common sense. I'm not debasing a good education or modern living - I would not want to have been born at any other time in history and I am unfortunately addicted to learning at a rapid pace. However, higher education should not inversely correlate to common sense.

The interesting thing is that our generation - call us Gen Y or the Millennials or whatever other buzz word of choice - but in my experience most of our generation is at the very least hard working. This is in part due to elevated opportunities at younger ages, especially in education. While not all of us trained for Harvard beginning in infancy, most of us still realized that in order to succeed we needed to work hard and be decent people. Not that there aren't exceptions... there always are... but even though in many ways life has been easy for us due to technology (and the subsequent lack of scarcity) we realized that in order to maintain that ease or one day have the option of not working hard that we would indeed have to work our tails off when we are young. And competition is high since we've all been elevated. Being raised in this competitive jungle has contributed to our work ethic and knowledge only second to the advent of the Internet.

For children of the waste-of-spacers, we either realized how damn lucky our parents were to grow up in an age of affluence or how unlucky if they didn't get a piece of the pie (to what degree luck plays a role is certainly up for debate. See The Black Swan and Fooled By Randomness for a deep discussion of the issue.) People's reactions vary, but the two most common in my experience are either adopting the work ethic of rightfully successful parents (or other role models) or working against the ways of the parents because there's no way they can sustain that lifestyle - whether it be good or bad. Think of it in a SWOT (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats) diagram (pictured below.)



And, for the stupid members of my generation, they are mostly getting a huge dose of big bad reality since the parents footing their obscene bills have lost their shirts in the stock market or are losing their houses. It would be sad if it wasn't deserved. (Not to say that everyone who gets in over their head is a complete idiot... there are plenty of victims, but most of them in my experience deserve it 100% for making ridiculous choices. As tragic as it may seem at the time.) Their kids will now have to jump on the hard working bandwagon too, or lose their former affluence. Either scenario will be a significant improvement to their current lives and probably the most successful action to prevent a crisis of this magnitude from happening again.

So, in conclusion, I am sick of the Worthless Generation continuously criticizing my generation and expecting us to do what they say hook, line, and sinker. This is me saying, "No, I will not follow your directives. I will find my own. Ones that are thoughtful, decent, and self-interested to the core." And, "Quit criticizing us before we've even had a chance to prove ourselves. You had your shot and blew it. We've not yet even begun to show our potential and I'm sick of hearing what a failure I am before even beginning. You are the failures, not us, so get out of the way."

I've been in the business of being successful for 20 years. So I will ask the Worthless Generation: What have you done in the last 20 years that warrants my respect since ruining our economic, political, and numerous societal institutions doesn't quite cut it?

I'm sure there are individuals with good answers and those are the people I respect. Yet, they just appear to be ordinary citizens. Imagine that.

I'm considering revising this to be an open letter, but don't have the time to re-write at the moment. Soon though. Soon.