If you live in Palo Alto, you probably think you know the story. It's the one about two guys in a garage, a bunch of geniuses at Stanford, and the inevitable triumph of the "California Dream." It's a nice story. It's also, according to Malcolm Harris, a total lie.
I spent the last week digging back into Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World, and honestly? It’s even more confrontational than I remembered. Harris doesn't just critique Silicon Valley; he tries to dismantle its entire soul. He argues that this little suburb isn't just a tech hub—it's the "operating manual" for global empire.
That’s a big claim for a town known for expensive juice and really good high schools.
The "Palo Alto System" is basically just horse racing
One of the weirdest and most fascinating parts of the book is where Harris traces everything back to Leland Stanford’s horses. Seriously. Stanford was obsessed with breeding trotting horses. He developed what Harris calls the Palo Alto System.
The goal wasn't just to make horses fast; it was to make them fast younger.
In the old days, you let a colt grow up before you pushed it. Stanford thought that was a waste of money. He pushed them as babies to see which ones had "potential." If they broke their legs? Fine. Better to know they’re a "loser" early so you don't waste more capital on them.
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Sound familiar? It’s the exact same logic behind Venture Capital today.
"Move fast and break things" isn't a new tech slogan. It’s a 19th-century horse-breeding philosophy applied to humans. Harris makes a pretty devastating case that this system—prioritizing speculative value over actual health—is why Palo Alto has such a heartbreaking history of youth clusters and high-pressure student culture.
It's a binary bet. You're either a unicorn or you're "waste."
It's not about geniuses in garages
We love the "Great Man" theory. We love the idea that Steve Jobs or Bill Gates were just so much smarter than everyone else that they had to win. Harris basically laughs at this. He uses a materialist lens—which is a fancy way of saying he looks at where the money and the land came from—to show that these guys were often just the right tools for the job.
If it hadn't been them, the system would have "coughed up" someone else.
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Why the history matters
- The Land: It started with the genocide of the Ohlone people. Harris is relentless about this. You can't understand the wealth of the 94301 zip code without acknowledging it sits on stolen ground.
- The Military: Silicon Valley didn't happen because of "free markets." It happened because the Pentagon poured billions into Stanford’s labs during the Cold War.
- The Eugenics: This is the part that makes people really uncomfortable. Early Stanford leaders like David Starr Jordan weren't just "men of their time." They were hardcore eugenicists who believed in "breeding" a better class of people. Harris argues this elitist DNA is still baked into the way tech companies hire and fire today.
Why people are still arguing about this book
When Palo Alto dropped in 2023, it was like a grenade. Some historians called it "cartoonishly negative." Others, like the late Mike Davis, saw it as a masterpiece of "revisionist history."
The controversy hasn't really died down because the problems Harris describes haven't gone away. Housing is still impossible. The wealth gap is still a canyon. And the tech giants are still acting like they’re doing us a favor while they monetize our every waking second.
Harris is a communist—he’s very open about that. He’s not looking for "reforms" or "better regulations." He’s looking for a total reset. His big solution at the end of the book? Give the land back. Specifically, return the Stanford University land and its assets to the Ohlone people.
It's a "breathtakingly audacious" proposal, as one reviewer put it. It’s also why he’s a hero to some and a "doomer" to others.
What you can actually do with this
You don't have to be a Marxist to find value in Harris’s research. If you're tired of the "tech bro" narrative, this is the ultimate antidote. Here is how to actually use these insights:
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Stop buying the "Genius" myth. When a CEO claims they "disrupted" an industry through sheer brilliance, look for the public subsidies and the labor exploitation underneath. It’s almost always there.
Look at your local history. Every town has a "Palo Alto System" on a smaller scale. Who owned the land before the developers? Who was excluded from the schools? Understanding the "haunting" of your own neighborhood changes how you vote on housing and transit.
Question the "Potential" trap. If you feel burnt out or like you’re "not living up to your potential," remember Leland Stanford’s horses. You aren't a speculative asset. You don't have to "trot young" to have value.
Harris’s book is 700 pages of dense, angry, brilliant prose. It’s a "Technicolor anvil." Even if you hate his politics, you can't ignore the facts he unearths about how the modern world was actually built. It wasn't built with "innovation" alone. It was built with blood, land, and a very specific kind of cold, calculating greed.
Key Takeaways for the Future
- Investigate the "Palo Alto System" in your own workplace. Are you being treated as a human or as "human capital" to be optimized?
- Support indigenous-led land trusts. Groups like the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust in the Bay Area are already doing the work Harris suggests.
- Read the primary sources. If Harris's claims about Herbert Hoover or Leland Stanford sound too wild to be true, go look at the Stanford University archives. They’re public.
The story of Palo Alto is the story of us. We're all living in the world they engineered. Understanding that is the first step toward building something that actually works for everyone.