Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio

Ray Dalio has weighed on exactly your question. This is a 45 minute video that directly answers exactly your question, that is very much worth a watch: ▶ this video The extremely quick version is that wars happen when am empire is in decline, not when they have collapsed, so we are still salvageable, but only if we get a handle on income inequality. He would say that Pax Americana has not collapsed yet, but that it is definitely in the process of collapsing. He asserts that the main identifier of empire decline is income inequality which is fueled heavily by inflation which was enabled by the abandoning of the gold standard (Have you seen that WTF happened in 1971 meme? Abandoning the gold standard is what happened. link ). When the rich get richer because they are the main winners of inflation, they start gutting institutions that can threaten their entrenched power (such as infrastructure, R&D, and most importantly education -- "we don't want people who can critically think, we want people who know how to perform a task" -- there's a move from liberal to technical education) which results in less innovation and therefore waning military strength and adaptability. As a militaries strength falters, the use of the American petrodollar for trade becomes less appealing, which would ultimately stop you from living beyond your means by powering yourself with debt/inflation. As soon as quality of life drops, civil war/revolution/civil unrest becomes much more likely, leading to inabil

If you aren't familiar with Ray Dalio's Principles for a Changing World Order, I can't recommend it enough (both the book and the YouTube video). You'll understand a lot better where the U.S. is in it's history and why so much is the way it is. ▶ this video

Assuming you live in the US like I do, definitely watch this video and read Dalio's book (I bought 2 copies) Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio (2022) ▶ this video Basically we're on the downward part of the cycle of wealth. That has NOT happened in our lifetimes, but it's happened many times before to other countries (Netherlands, Britain, China). Some things go in 150 or 250 year cycles and they're hard to see. Basically the idea is that in the long term, countries need to actually produce wealth in accordance to how much money they print. HOWEVER, the problem is that you can actually get away with NOT doing so for 50+ years -- the span of more than one generation. Particularly if you have the reserve currency of the world, as the US currently does. Dalio links a lot of our ills to Nixon's untethering of the dollar in the early 1970's. That reminds me of a good tweet -- What if your entire personality depends on low interest rates ? The idea there is that the habits and culture we've grown up with have been enforced by this distortion of wealth. --- To create wealth as a country, you need education, rule of law, cooperation, trust, etc. There has to be real output, and people have to push in the same direction. But if you can just print money instead of doing the work of those things, then why bother getting educated? Why not just rip people off? Why not rip off the government? They're just printing it anyway. So the social order is hugely affected

I tend to ignore the "endless screeching", and I've long had an optimistic world view somewhat aligned with say Steven Pinker -- we're living through the best times, roughly monotonic progress, with some temporary setbacks. But this recent video by Ray Dalio made me think a lot, and led me to his books: ▶ this video Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order He did a bunch of quantitative research and came up with a model for the prosperity of countries, and "the world order". In the model, there were 4 world leaders at various points: Dutch, British, Americans, and Chinese. The basic pattern is that they were productive and industrious, gained military power, and grew to hold the world's reserve concurrency. After they hold the world's reserve concurrency, they stop being as productive. The rich parents can bend the rules and corrupt society for their kids. And there is more internal conflict about how to divvy up a fixed or declining pie. There can be more external conflict once rivals see weakness. In Dalio's view, China is obviously on the rise economically, and you also see signs of their increased military power. There is more to it than that -- see the video and books, but that's my short summary. ----- It sounds a little too "clean", but after some reflection, a lot of it is hard to argue with. (I'd definitely be interested in criticisms -- this presentation / framing is pretty new.) This doesn't mean America is "collapsing". But I would now say it's clearly "dec

I always recommend Ray Dalio's video on how economics: ▶ this video The tariffs and heck, electing a man like Trump, is a response to the existing situation. 1. Debt is very high and increasing at an unsustainable rate. Rather than default on debts, empires always print more money. 2. Competitiveness has gone down. In times of comfort, work ethic goes down too and a culture emerges where the working class is looked down on. 3. Economic disparity results in political polarity between the left and the right. This leads to revolutions. American revolutions tend to be fairly peaceful, but many are violent. 4. Technological advances allows for a shift in the order. New contenders have the conditions to make good use of them, which allows them to outpace the global leader. 5. Wars increase in a desperate move to hold on to power without having an economic lead. This leads to overextension and further collapse. The tariffs are primarily a response to debt and competitiveness. Trump's election and everyone's distrust for him stems from political polarity. Many of his recent surprising actions are in preparation for a war. The tariffs are an attempted cure to an existing problem. But like many cures, it buys time until the inevitable happens. It's not making the US more competitive. It might not cure the economic disparity. So what you see is three things coming together: 1) admission that the US debt may not be manageable, 2) worrying long term outlook, 3) Trump's lack of diplomacy making

Fiat works until it doesn't. Whether that's inflation, corrupt government, or the long term debt cycle which we nearing the end of. Ray Dalio has a good video about what that means and how this has played out every time over the past 500 years: ▶ this video

Great piece. Most MBAs learn this in b-school. This is wonderfully paired with this video (from Ray Dalio) --> which draws analogs to this process on the macro / country level ▶ this video

Ray Dalio wrote a book theorizing about some of these possibilities. I haven't read it yet but this video summary of it is pretty interesting. ▶ this video

I'm not that familiar with the Fourth Turning and this also originates from the US, but I did find it quite helpful when considering where things are, have been and might be going and how the US is in a cycle along with other nations: ▶ this video I'd also not heard of Glocalization, but it reminds me of a couple of topics that are covered in Fritjof Capra's Systems View of Life book (also a course), around emergent behaviour in complex systems and how this competes with top down command and control ideas (or in organisations as the formal and informal networks).

This video seems appropriate with the article: ▶ this video A friend recently shared this video “principles for dealing with the changing world order” which stirred up a very solemn feeling in me. It may be the first time as an American that I felt a sense of duty to compete in regard to our international place. I’ve been wondering if any other Americans (and the west in general) wonder what they personally can do. In the video, Ray Dalio suggests saving money (fiscal conservatism?), being nice (political tolerance?), and competing technologically. If only it were that simple.

I am surprised no one has shared these two important documentary videos on money: Money as Debt: link Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio: ▶ this video

(recklessly simplified ramblings of an semi-old man below) Remembering the "21 lessons for the 21st century" and how Harari described the arm-wrestling between the various ideologies/worlds, I see the the world is split in 3 (3.5) pieces. 1) The West (US-EU-satellites - writing first coz I'm in it) 2) The anti-west: Russia and satellites, Iran, NK, etc.)(they broke SO MANY EGGS but still - no omelette - well apart from the very few who rule via death) 3) The indifferent giants (they are planning their own world domination - soon)(see ▶ this video is next, then perhaps India(?)) 0.5) The remaining 0.5 (e.g. some African countries that will just follow whoever gives them goodies/is the next global overlord). In IT I use the phrase: the more you do, the more you need to do. I.e. you have 10 systems, you need to do 100 things (backups, encryption, training, etc.). When you go to 20 systems and 5 are talking to each other you also need job schedulers, and you add in the connected dots and complexity (thus more assets produce more effort) You got a wikipedia? There is a new attack/manipulation opportunity (available to all the players). The more you got, the more you need to do. Now, why I care.. (this is not about politics/religion) I got some stocks and mutual funds. If the "West" is going "down", I want to make sure that my/the next generations will not receive a bunch of SP500 that is worth $0, so do I start NOW to buy "China", "India"? Also, should we be telling our kids to start l