Malcolm Harris > Quotes

“Millennials are growing up highly attuned to the needs of the capital markets. We are encouraged to strategize and scheme to find places, times, and roles where we can be effectively put to work. Efficiency is our existential purpose, and we are a generation of finely honed tools, crafted from embryos to be lean, mean production machine.”
― Malcolm Harris

“In a world where every choice is an investment, growing up becomes a very complex exercise in risk management.”
― Malcolm Harris

“It’s a contradiction: Kids have to be taught how to use tools that will help them reduce their work-time, without it actually reducing their work-time.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“a generic formula: Anglos rule; all natives are Indians; all land and water is just gold waiting to happen. Geopolitics took on the character of the gold rush, as European colonial powers engaged in competitive scrambles for colonial territory in sub-Saharan Africa and”
― Malcolm Harris, Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

“If you dangle in front of parents the kind of 1 percent life outcome that goes with being a star, some of them will grab for it, even if objectively it’s not a very good plan for their child’s long-term wellbeing. Once a parent hears that their kid might have potential - as a painter, a dancer, a tennis player, a musician, whatever - all the stories of struggling artists and washed up athletes fade to the background.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“School authorities warn students that any deviant behavior on a child’s part is irresponsible because it could have severe and long-lasting consequences for their future, and then they enforce unreasonably harsh disciplinary standards that have severe and long-lasting consequences for the child’s future. That’s not a warning, it’s a promise.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“Technological development leads to increased worker productivity, declining labor costs, more competition, a shift in the costs of human capital development onto individual competitors, and increased productivity all over again.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“What distinguishes the way a caring family or state institution treats a child from the way an investor would, if they’re both primarily concerned with the child’s future success? An investor may want an asset to achieve its full potential, but the investor doesn’t particularly care whether that kid is happy while they do it. A caring parent, on the other hand, balances an interest in a child’s future achievement with the child’s present wellbeing.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“A hypercompetitive environment sets parents up for dreams of champion children, and then for almost inevitable heartbreak. Millennials of all abilities have grown up in the shadow of these expectations, expectations that by definition, only a very few of us can fulfill.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“As in other industries, the recruitment process has become a lot easier (cheaper) for employers and a lot more expensive for would be employees. A demo with a new sound or a solid audition isn’t good enough. Artists are now expected to arrive with a market-ready brand and audience, saving their corporate overlords the makeover expense. Building a brand is no longer the purview of slick besuited experts; it’s the individual responsibility of every voice that wants to “make it.”
― Malcolm Harris, Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials

“How can you know what you want or feel or think—who you are—if you don't know which way history's marionette strings are tugging? [...] People aren't puppets, and to pull a person is to create the conditions for rebellion. Maybe we're more like butterflies, pinned live and wriggling onto history's collage.

If, as I have been convinced, the point of life and the meaning of freedom is to make something with what the world makes of you, then it's necessary to locate those places where history reaches through your self and sticks you to the board.”
― malcolm harris