Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order

Why Nations Succeed or Fail

By: Ray Dalio

Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Ray Dalio

Length: 16 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's Summary

New York Times Best Seller 

“A provocative read ... There are few tomes that coherently map such broad economic histories as well as Mr. Dalio’s. Perhaps more unusually, Mr. Dalio has managed to identify metrics from that history that can be applied to understand today.” (Andrew Ross Sorkin, New York Times)

From legendary investor Ray Dalio, author of the number-one New York Times best seller Principles, who has spent half a century studying global economies and markets, Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order examines history’s most turbulent economic and political periods to reveal why the times ahead will likely be radically different from those we’ve experienced in our lifetimes - and to offer practical advice on how to navigate them well.

A few years ago, Ray Dalio noticed a confluence of political and economic conditions he hadn’t encountered before. They included huge debts and zero or near-zero interest rates that led to the massive printing of money in the world’s three major reserve currencies; big political and social conflicts within countries, especially the US, due to the largest wealth, political, and values disparities in more than 100 years; and the rising of a world power (China) to challenge the existing world power (US) and the existing world order. The last time that this confluence occurred was between 1930 and 1945. This realization sent Dalio on a search for the repeating patterns and cause/effect relationships underlying all major changes in wealth and power over the last 500 years. 

In this remarkable and timely addition to his Principles series, Dalio brings listeners along for his study of the major empires - including the Dutch, the British, and the American - putting into perspective the “Big Cycle” that has driven the successes and failures of all the world’s major countries throughout history. He reveals the timeless and universal forces behind these shifts and uses them to look into the future, offering practical principles for positioning oneself for what’s ahead.

©2021 Ray Dalio. All rights reserved. (P)2021 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

Ray Dalio, Chinas New Minister of Propoganda

Overall, the book does a good job at providing a good history lesson of the last 500 years and how each of the last three empires became the world reserve currency. However, this book is incredibly bias. Dalio constantly criticizes the U.S. while constantly shying away from criticizing China even in areas where the rest of the world, to include the Chinese people themselves, do criticize China. For example, Dalio is extremely harsh on the U.S. pertaining to the polarization of political parties, but does not criticize the Chinese president for eliminating term limits and making China's Constitution modifiable by his personal opinions without government consent. This shows tremendous and unfair bias which weakens his position as an unbiased scholar. The book is littered with shots at the U.S. and grossly understates the U.S. contributions to the world especially over the last 100 years. For instance, Dalio says China has developed technologically faster than any other nation. Seeing as how China is over 7,000 years old and nearly every technologic invention of the last 150 years was invented by the U.S. (ie: internet, computer, social media, Wi-Fi, smart phone, airplane, GPS, internet search engines, etc) and the U.S. is only about 350 years old, this statement by Dalio is so distorted beyond reality it is unfathomable to read.
The book is basically a cheerleading session by Dalio about his Chinese overlord. Disappointingly inaccurate and bias. Very disappointing from Dalio since he is normally so accurate and unbias.

Why he's betting on China and cryptocurrency

Discloses he's senior advisor to China! Extra respectful of Chinese point of view, never critical, warmly supportive, warns USA not to try anything against China. Anything!

Past Treasury secretaries Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers all onboard - they recommended this book! Dalio likes crptocurrency and explains why.

Dalio narrated introduction with great emotion. He quickly ceased narrating, then energy level dropped 50%. Keep that in mind.

Says dollar (USD) dramatically falls, not able to predict when, sees USA in epic move to disorder, says economic system increasingly unfair, billionaires get supported by government, economic unfairness causing slide into war/revolution/civil war he says. Says number one thing everybody wants in China is to replace almighty dollar which I believe is the point of this book.

Gives USA 50% chance for civil war, revolution or external war. Provides advice on this, seems sensible when based on book's highly filtered points. Smart individuals creating new kinds of crypto, crypto in early stage not too late to create your own, and moving homes to more appropriate, safer locations. Owning some gold too.

The order/disorder cycles Dalio describes are haunting, heavy on geopolitics, compares past reserve currencies (guilder and pound) to USD. Although he doesn't explicitly say it, underlying idea might be for U.S. to create/adopt new currency to replace dollar thereby get out of debt - a fresh start maybe?

Listening to this figuratively feels like getting kicked in stomach then backhanded in face. I felt he was indirect, having something important to say but held back despite urgency.

$10M of GREAT research for 25 bucks.

I had Ray Dalio's latest book on my hit list and when it was released on Tuesday, I got the audio version immediately, then I got the print version. The book is very good and even works in audio. The audio version comes with a PDF for all the charts (172 pages!) and yet audio works because Ray describes the charts very well. I did review the charts after listening to a section and it worked well and I never felt that I was really missing anything while listening. That's unusual for a book like this. This book is the culmination of about 12 years and probably more than $10M in research by the most connected people you'll find anywhere. It's current right up until a few months ago. And you can buy this research and advice report for 25 bucks (less for Kindle). The historical research is impressive and enjoyable. The extensive discussion on China and the US, the past, today, and in the future, is important. Ray has done business in China for 37 years and has access to top leadership there. He knows what he is talking about. Unlike so many armchair quarterbacks, he's actually been there and done that. There are a lot of books you don't have to read if you read this one. Approach it with eyes and mind wide open.

Great Until Ray stops reading

Love the books and content but once ray stops reading it becomes very dry. Ray please read this book start to finish. Rays tone and reading style makes this book much better.

Sub-par and Suspect review bombing

There's significant numbers of reviews that seem suspect. The book is OK, but likely shouldn't be popping up as #1 on trending feeds for finance books.
Bought, listened to the beginning, and skipped to predictions, ended up returning. Nothing new here, just a standard financials-only take on the rise of China and the fall of the US from a single viewpoint, many times contradictory. It explains the precursors to collapse, and then explains the current situation, ignores potential downsides for China, and ignores potential upsides for the US.

Much of the book pertains to the author bragging about his financial models. Rarely bringing up factors that he isn't talking about: Demography, Geography, Geopolitics, and historical asset growth.

Don't reccomend unless you're looking for a single economic-only based counterpoint to a traditional extremely pro-US author such as Friedman. (Albeit at a much shallower take)

An Academic Globalist View: China has Already Won

Knowing this book was written by a well-known capitalist I was looking forward to his views And learning how the US might compete in a new goal order. I didn’t get that. What I got was an Academic’s view of how the DEBT cycle controls everything. Dalio fails to truly appreciate the American free enterprise system and the dramatic advantages of capitalism over Marxism. Because Mr. Dalio has very senior friends in China he gave us their disproportionate views of how authoritarianism will always succeed vs. individualism. Yet he does concede that the most dramatic changes in civilization, and thus the global power structure, have come from creative individual ideas. Yet the author does nothing to quantify them or identify how to find such game changing entrepreneurs and technology. He also ignores the American Judeo-Christian ethic, saying that the Chinese submit to an authoritarian government while, like most Academics, he ignores the fact that in the West entrepreneurs and capitalism acknowledging that God is the ultimate authority, not the government. Bottom line: Dalio feels the authoritarian Chinese CCP has already won. Thus, no need to read the book. Just monitor the US 100 year Debt cycle and trade off of that. 👍

Jeremy has a history channel voice

only downside is it is easy to accidently tune out Jeremy. he has that mellow history channel-esque voice that can turn into background noise if you aren't paying attention

Recycled Right-wing Capitalist Propaganda

Rehashed, disproven theories with dry presentation and broad generalized assumptions based on long ago disproved theory on power structures. Yawn.

Meh

There is some good content here but it's difficult at times to listen to the author talk about China knowing he has so much investment capital tied into their empire. I know his entire business revolves around protecting capital and with that level of money you can't avoid China, but some things he said really bothered me. Particularly about letting China handle their human rights issues the way they see fit. I'm just not sure at "other" times in history that viewpoint would have been so easy to say. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone due to the obvious bias.

great book

I stumbled upon this title and I am intrigued. I am also enjoying hearing truth without politics.