Crimson opinion writer
Alexander Junxiang Chen
Latest Content
The Interesting Thing About Interest
The very concept of interest is, at its core, largely synonymous with the nature and strength of the relationship between a lender and borrower. This explains why a rise in social complexity, at least initially, begets the emergence of the interest rate.
Open Spaces
For those more burdened than others by the drudgery of daily life, this escapist itch is predictably stronger. Even so, there certainly lies in all of us to some degree, a tiny Mephistophelian voice that, rather than tempt with material pleasures, goads us to gleefully abandon the present. To put it another way: How many of you have ever had the desire, however fleeting, to drop everything and take a two-week sojourn to St. Lucia?
We’ve Always Been Global
Global integration can be culled, and free trade can be suppressed, but if history is any guide, the world will never stop being global — and for the better.
Of Bitcoin and Barbarians
Among the many parallels that politicians and thinkers so often draw between the Roman world and ours, perhaps one that should be heeded with caution is the loss of public trust in the Roman “financial” system and the one that we live with today.