Kids These Days
Human Capital and the Making of Millenials
Malcolm Harris
Having read it
★★★★☆
A surprisingly good read about wider issues, not just Millenials. Context is everything and, as the author infers and states (with evidence) through his writings, it is deeper societal (and institutional) problems that are making this generation into ‘human capital’, then claiming it is their fault when they can’t compete and excel in a system that is actually failing them and seems to only worry about profit. Despite its American bias its ideas and statements should be shared throughout the capitalist world.
Millennials are a generation of learners but seem to have to work a certain way these days to succeed and maximise their worth, as if they’re in some sort of authoritarian state that won’t allow too much, if any, individuality from these upstarts, certainly if that makes the fallacies of society too clear to the general populace!
A good passage
No one chooses the historical circumstances of their birth. If Millennials are different in one way or another, it’s not because we’re more (or less) evolved than our parents or grandparents; it’s because they’ve changed the world in ways that have produced people like us. And we didn’t happen by accident: Over the past forty years we have witnessed an accelerated and historically unprecedented pace of change as capitalism emerged as the single dominant mode of organizing society. It’s a system based on speed, and the speed is always increasing. Capitalism changes lives for the same reason people breathe: It has to in order to survive. Lately, this system has started to hyperventilate: It’s desperate to find anything that hasn’t yet been reengineered to maximize profit, and then it makes those changes as quickly as possible. The rate of change is visibly unsustainable. The profiteers call this process ‘disruption,’ while commentators on the left generally call it ‘neoliberalism’ or ‘late capitalism.’ Millennials know it better as ‘the world,’ or ‘America,’ or ‘Everything.’ And Everything sucks.
A second good passage
Classrooms and teachers that look alike on paper might very well be totally different in ways the test can’t see. Meanwhile, anything that’s enjoyable or nurturing about school falls away if it can’t be made to serve the tests.
A third good passage
It’s on a more fundamental level that the whole enterprise of ethics through consumerism is a waste of time. The market is not a magic desire-fulfilling machine we can reprogram to green the earth and level inequality. It is, rather, a vast system of exploitation in which workers are compelled to labor for their subsistence, and owners reap the profits. The market offers a variety of goods and experiences that seems infinite, but it’s actually very limited. There are many different flavors of Pop-Tarts, but none of them opens a portal to a world where you don’t have to trade half your waking life to get enough to eat.