“First off, thanks for being such loyal Apple fans and using the ipods, iphones and ipads I created while you sit around the park all day. I know you’re unemployed and I appreciate you taking what used to be an entire months salary for you to buy Apple products. As for protesting, I know you’re all very mad and frustrated at the current political, social and economic imbalance that there appears to be in the U.S. right now, but you’re forgetting one very important thing…
We live in a country where everyone has the opportunity to be the richest 10%, 5%, 1% or .001% of society. This isn’t a system of government where power is inherited from one generation to the next. How the hell do you think I got so rich!? While your hippie parents were smoking pot at Woodstock, I was busy building fucking computers on a shoe string budget with Wozniak and I didn’t have half the resources you little punks have today. You think it’s hard to start a company now? Try starting a company 30 years ago when I was your age.
These days everyone is throwing cash at startups trying to get in on the next big deal. You have all sorts of meetups, forums and websites connecting VC’s and Angel Investors with entrepreneurs. You can market your products and create buzz for next to nothing using social media and uploading videos online. Now I know that I’ve entirely turned industries upside down and some people are temporarily out of work because what they used to do isn’t good enough anymore, but it’s during these rapidly evolving times and disruption when the greatest opportunities to become rich exist. You just have to figure out what people want and build it.
Lastly, why did you start your protests in Wall Street?! Everyone knows we live in a day and age where anyone can be traders using online trading desks like Fidelity, Etrade or TD Ameritrade. You can trade currencies, commodities, stocks and bonds just like all those greedy Wall Street types you’re so made at. If anything the people that should be mad is the corporate folks, because any jackass now has all the same tools available to them as what was exclusively available to big corporations just a few years ago. It seems that the big banks helping companies go public can’t even charge their big fees anymore because companies create liquidity and don’t even have to go public anymore thanks to secondary investment markets like SecondMarket.
Now I’m only going to tell you this once because I have to get back to work, but get off your sorry, lazy ass and instead of being a menace to society and creating attention to yourselves by blocking traffic, go build something people in the 21st century can use. Stop believing in the promise that if you go to school you are sure to land a high paying job that will be able to pay off all those student loans you owe to the very banks you’re so mad at. Nothing in this life is guaranteed and you are going to have to fight tooth and nail potentially just to make a modest living, but I assure you it’s better than how billions of others live, because unlike in other countries Americans have a chance to become extremely wealthy.
So instead of bitching about how this life is unfair and why you are at such a disadvantage, follow the advice I gave during my Stanford commencement speech, find work you love, find a spouse you love, never settle and most importantly stay hungry and stay foolish. And for Pete’s sake quit wasting all the good oxygen and make yourselves useful.”