Dylan Saba on how Israel is losing support among younger American Jews

The younger Jewish community in the United States is far more open to Palestinian liberation, is far more active on this issue than the generations prior and it's posed a real generational divide within the Jewish community, but it's also inspired a lot of hope that we can actually build a pluralistic justice movement on this issue.  And that poses a threat.  That poses a threat to pro-Israel groups, to the older generation who counts on that support from the Jewish community to justify Israel's crimes.  And they're losing that support and the data indicates that they're losing that support and that's a growing trend and it's beautiful to see.

~ Dylan Saba, "Zionist anti-Palestinian censorship is surging," Chris Hedges Report, 24:00 mark, November 24, 2023

Rolf Dobelli on the challenge of youth

Our sample sizes are too small, our decisions rushed - or, in the language of statisticians, not representative.  We rely on a false impression of reality, believing that with a few random spot tests we can find the man or woman of our dreams, our ideal job, the best place to live.  Sure, it might work out - if so, then I'm thrilled for you - but if it does, it will only be by a stroke of good fortune, and nobody should pin their hopes on that.

The world is much bigger, richer and more diverse than we imagine, so try to take as many samples as you can while you're still young.  Your first years of adulthood aren't about earning money or building a career.  They're about getting acquainted with the universe of possibility.  Be extremely receptive.  Taste whatever fate dishes up.  Read widely, because novels and short stories are excellent simulations of life.  Only as you age should you adapt your modus operandi and become highly selective.  By then you'll know what you like and what you don't.

~ Rolf Dobelli, The Art of the Good Life, "The Secretary Problem," pp. 192-193

Thomas Sowell on being a young political leftist

One of the bittersweet things about growing old is realizing how mistaken you were when you were young.  As a young political leftist, I saw the left as the voice of the common man.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

~ Thomas Sowell

Martin Lau on learning from young people

First of all, the challenge rather for myself being not a young fund manager is that there are so many new things.  So, I just talked about video streaming and I needed to go to my colleague, and I deliberately put two youngest colleagues within our team sitting next to me, so that I can look at how they do video streaming.  Actually, one of them set up a shop and painted and sells stationery--but not from the company, from her own pocket, just for fun.  And by doing so you actually learn about how young people behave.  And I think it's fair to say the best business opportunities come from the younger people.  So, I think that's how I try to learn.

~ Martin Lau, FSSA Investment Managers, "Martin Lau: Now is a Better Time to Buy China," Morningstar's The Long View, August 3, 2021

Steve Goldstein on the investment experience of GameStop and AMC speculators

And those traders are inexperienced. Cardify, a consumer-data firm, did a survey of 1,600 self-directed investors in GameStop and cinema chain AMC Entertainment, and found that most were inexperienced investors having less than 12 months of experience, and another quarter with one to two years’ experience. Nearly half made their biggest-ever do-it-yourself trading investment in the last four weeks, according to the survey that ended on Monday. 

Why? Of these overwhelmingly young and male investors, 45% said for quick financial profits. Nearly 20% said it was part of a long-term investing strategy, and 16% said to spite big hedge funds and institutional investors, according to Cardify.

~ Steve Goldstein, "GameStop’s meteoric gains have almost entirely disappeared — here’s advice for those who didn’t get out in time," MarketWatch, February 5, 2021

Sean Connery on the freedom of youth

But when I was young, we didn't know we lacked anything, we had nothing to compare it to. And there's a freedom in that.

~ Sir Sean Connery, speech for American Film Life Achievement Award, 2016

Sean Connery
1930 - 2020

Emma Elliott Freire on the impact of the Covid rules on children

Articles about the impact of the pandemic on children tend to focus on the education they have lost due to school closures. But it is also worth noting that children are witnessing repeated violations of their innate sense of fairness. This may well leave them with a sense of mistrust towards institutions and authorities. Is COVID-19 going to raise up a generation of libertarians?

~ Emma Elliott Freire, "Why COVID Kids May Grow Up To Be Libertarians," FEE.org, October 13, 2020

Zachary Yost on the role of guilt-ridden rich kids in BLM protests

Hopefully, as social life slowly returns to normal and as the weather gets colder, the guilt-ridden rich kids will tire out from playacting as revolutionaries and return home. But until then, it seems that the rest of us will be forced to suffer as they work out their psychological problems through some window-smashing therapy.

~ Zachary Yost, "What's with the Rich Kid Revolutionaries?," Mises Wire, September 22, 2020

Thomas Sowell on educating the younger generation

We're raising whole generations who regard facts as more or less optional. And they are being taught that it's important to have views, and they're not being taught that it's important to know what you're talking about. It's important to hear the opposite viewpoint and more important, to learn how to distinguish why viewpoint A and viewpoint B are different and which one has the most evidence or logic behind it. 

~ Thomas Sowell, Hoover Institute interview, 7:50 mark, posted on YouTube September 18, 2020

Amity Shlaes on the revolutionary attitude of youth in America

Jeff Deist: There is a sense of a slow, gradual march, and then occasionally there are great leaps forward.  It feels like we're in the latter phase at the moment.

Amity Shlaes: The current period reminds us of the Cultural Revolution in China - heavy pressure from youth, and dangerous youth sanctimony.  Young people telling older people the way things must be.  It's disconcerting to observe such a dynamic in the United States.

~ Amity Shlaes, "2020: The 1960s Redux?," The Austrian, July-August 2020

Karen Kwiatkowski on the state, youth and their future

One of the worst things that can happen to a state is to appear ridiculous.

Especially in the eyes of the young, who have had their expectations disappointed, their plans disrupted by mandate, their elders shown to be idiotic and frightened, their government greedy, avaricious, sadistic.

The state itself has assisted the liberty movement, with its lumbering broad-brush sadism. It far prefers physical destruction, marches and riots, police brutality and the outright rage of its citizens to the cuts of a thousand poems – and 40 million awakening children who suddenly become aware that the King is buck naked, ugly, angry, vile, and simultaneously weak and wasted.

At this point, students can still walk away, and experiment with disobedience to the state, test the boundaries of what may be allowed, test state relevance to their own lives. They are being presented with a wild kind of freedom many have not yet experienced, nor even dreamed. Regardless of what they do, the future is theirs, and I expect great things.

~ Karen Kwiatkowski, "Misty Poets," LewRockwell.com, September 2, 2020

Ludwig von Mises on mass unemployment providing recruiting ground for radical political movements

Permanent mass unemployment destroys the moral foundations of the social order.  The young people, who, having finished their training for work, are forced to remain idle, are the ferment out of which the most radical political movements are formed.  In their ranks the soldiers of the next revolution are recruited.

~ Ludwig von Mises, Socialism

Napoleon Bonaparte on the influence of early experience

Everything you think is colored significantly by the experience you had in your early twenties.

~ Napoleon Bonaparte

(As recounted by Jim Grant in interview with Bill Fleckenstein, 4:00 mark, May 10, 2019)

John Mackey on youth and innovation

I think one of the advantages of being young is not only do you have a lot of energy, but you don't know what you can't do.  You don't yet know your limitations...  We usually depend upon a lot of our breakthroughs with young people because they naturally think outside the box because they have never been in the box.  And they naturally just tend to be more creative and you see many of the innovations that are happening in our society by people in their 20s.  In my generation, how old was Bill Gates when he started Microsoft, or Steve Job when he started Apple, or Michael Dell when he was in his college dorm selling computers?  Now, how old is Mark Zuckerberg when he started Facebook?  It's story after story after story of very young people who just went for it and are successful.

~ John Mackey, co-founder of Whole Foods Market, interview with Patrick Gentempo, "Money Revealed - Part 5"