Markets, States, and the Logic of Incentives
By: Yan Xinkai (Kelly) From the butcher in Smith’s time 1 to the chatbot today, we are served not out of goodwill, but because it pays to serve. Enterprise behavior is not about intent, but about incentives. The question is not whether a firm seeks profit or serves under a public or charitable flag, but what kinds of behavior its "incentive architecture" promotes. This essay examines the hope of profit, and its opposite: do they encourage innovation, adaptiveness and account
11 hours ago11 min read
The Importance of Art and Literacy in an Era of Artificial Intelligence
By: Anisa Chandra This article wasn’t written with AI. That statement takes on more meaning as more of our world becomes centered on ChatGPT, Gemini, or ClaudeAI outputs. And you, dear reader, may be thinking to yourself: Why choose the harder route? Why spend hours creating a piece of media that could have been optimized, could have been done by a chatbot in a minute? To me, that’s because at the end of the day, an over-reliance on AI devalues human creativity and thinking.
Jan 235 min read
Chicago, September
The Second City on a Day the Nation Stood Still By: Pranav Damera No one in Chicago woke up expecting the sky to feel dangerous. The morning air was cool enough to remind you autumn was coming, and Lake Michigan had that early-sun shimmer that makes the city look cleaner than it really is. People rode the Red Line with backpacks and folded newspapers, bought coffee from corner carts, and hurried across streets that smelled faintly of diesel and bakery steam drifting out of th
Jan 154 min read