We Are the Ones

Hey Internet! Welcome to the Goggles Off Blog! This blog is an attempt by the creators of the Goggles Off Radio Show to keep the dialogue going even when the show is off the air. I am the co-host of Goggles Off along with my friend Adam Meinecke. I am a sophomore economics and business student at Cornell College and an aspiring entrepreneur.

My generation has been given its fair share of names. The names have spanned from the 9/11 Generation, to Internet Generation—plus its countless derivatives ranging from the “Blog-eneration” and the “Craigslist Cohort” to the Wikipedia and YouTube Generation—to the bigheaded “ME” generation. Though, I like to characterize of us as the next great entrepreneurial generation or, correspondingly, the next great American generation.

My cohort is the largest since the Baby Boom, giving us the power of numbers. My generation has been forced to confront many pivitol national problems in our formative years. The 9/11 terror attacks in our early formative years helped to instill an understanding of the existential threat to our nation posed by radical Islamic extremism, as well as a curiousity regarding international affairs that has lead to a record-breaking number of college graduates with interest in entering into fields relating to international affairs. The late 2000’s subprime mortgage crisis and the resulting recession has forced us to examine the concepts of generational debt transfer and unsustainable personal, commercial and governmental liability levels. The nations fragile economic state has limited the number of employment opportunites available to young adults entering the work force. Nevertheless, this scarcity has turned out to be an asset; forcing us to learn to live lifestyles of frugality, and teaching us to invest our money in savings accounts or non-volatile securities (and in doing so put the savings and investment practices of the previous cohort to shame).

Back in 2008, the election of President Barack Obama ushered in a new era of youth activism in our country. Seventy percent of his state chairs were under the age of 25. The Internet has created an entirely new economy in this country, and my generation stands to rise up as the new captains of industry in America.

If we are to achieve this however, we cannot afforded to be shackled with mountains of bureaucratic and regulatory red tape that will stifle the most innovative of new ideas that arise from our uniquely logged on generation. To me, the best thing that the government can do to help cultivate the new economic boom that my peers and I will lead is to stay out of our way.

We don’t need the government of the 21st century to cripple us with 20th century bureaucracy. We don’t need them to try and point us in the right direction. We need them to stay out of our way and let us spread our wings and succeed. Past industrial revolutions have always taken root in times when the government respected property rights and entrepreneurial autonomy, and this one will be no different.

So please, help us to make this generation the next Greatest Generation. You can help us by staying out of our way. Thank you and remember to leave the goggles at the door.