How 19th Century US Is Inspiring China’s Xi
John Pierpont Morgan is the model for Beijing’s push to limit over-competition.
Addressing rat-race competition.
Photographer: Greg Baker/AFP/Getty Images
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The Oxford English Dictionary has nine separate definitions for the word “involution.” In mathematics, it refers to a function or transformation that is equal to its own inverse and gives its own identity when applied to itself. In anatomy, involution refers to the shrinkage of human organs in old age. In the economy, as Tracy Alloway has noted in the Odd Lots newsletter, it’s associated with the anthropologist Clifford Geertz to describe situations where greater input (an increase in labor) does not yield proportional output (more crops or greater innovation).