Name: Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order
ISBN: 9781471662027

What Hacker News says

Luker88Aug 2025

I am reading the book from Ray Dalio, "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order".

This article seems a little reductive in its analysis, but this is actually a huge topic.

I have not finished the book yet, I don't claim to understand all its implications, but I really like it because it analyzes many empires over the centuries, and tries to track multiple determinants for all of them (also a lot of pretty graphs).

Very, very recommended book if you are interested in this topic.

Dalio analysis agrees that today China power is rising and the USA is weakening (duh). It is a slow progress, and the financial aspect is merely the last determinant to show this. Dalio however does not talk much about the future, aside from the obvious initial decline of the USA.

Many point to China as the next big empire, however it might not become it as China does not seem to be too interested in becoming the world money reserve (Dalio uses this as a necessary definition for an "empire"). Also while China has imported many ideas and culture from our world, the language and culture gap remains huge even today, and that inevitably limits influence and power.

These couple of things might allow for a longer time before the big change of power, and even let the west come up again.

What I love about the book is how clear the situation is even without pointing to specific, detailed situations, political or financial decisions.

The decline did not start yesterday, or just 4 or 5 years ago either. Education, competitiveness, inequality, even military paint a clear trajectory. It takes time. Dalio tentatively gives an average of 250 years between rise and fall of an empire, and we seem to have passed the peak decade or two ago.

I'm European, and it's also very clear how Europe will definitely not be the next power, either. Too fragmented, no cohesion, etc.

You can find a few graphs of the book on the web, it should give you a clear idea of the kind of analysis.

thread

hayst4ckApr 2025

The golden prize for America's enemies is to remove the US dollar as a global reserve currency.

Since trade is conducted largely in USD, that means other governments must purchase USD to trade. This is the core of trade deficits. Foreign countries buy US dollars so they can trade with other people. That guarantees the deficit since they give us something in exchange for USD, which they do not then spend on goods we make.

If you no longer want the trade deficit that means payments of fealty by those who trade in dollars, which countries aren't likely to tolerate, or abandoning the USD as a global reserve currency, which would be disastrous, truly disastrous. Our debts would suddenly become existential because inflating our currency to pay for them could result in functionally not being able to import goods required to run our economy. I don't think many truly understand just how disastrous it will be.

This isn't America's liberation day. This is Russia's and China's liberation day. While America was once able to check their power, America is no longer in a position to do so, we will barely be in a position to satisfy our own military's logistics requirements.

This is a decapitation strike (Timothy Snyder: Decapitation Strike -- https://archive.is/1xkxK) on America by our enemies. It is not only a de facto soft blockade of American trade, but it is an attack on the mechanics of American hegemony. Politicians already ask for money instead of votes or actions. That means if foreign governments spend money, they can elect their preferred candidates. America's own government was a result of french support. We institute regime change in other counties, and I see no reason to believe we are immune.

If trade stops occurring in US Dollar, which is a consequence of the stated goal of our current ruling regime, that would be the coup de grace on this country's hegemony. It is the definitive end to it, and the birth of Chinese hegemony.

Ray Dalio's Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order feels prescient: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

thread

HenryBemisJan 2025

Numerous examples of China-says-jump-everyone-says-how-high.

NBA, any company that makes anything within China using slavery, the guy/actor/wrestler (the name escapes me right now) who had to learn Chinese to apologize. Take your pick of "precedent".

1bn customers = a lot of money. A company that will kiss the ring will do the right thing by its shareholders and a nasty thing against humanity. I am 200% sure that Apple has given the keys for all users/phones/servers in China to the gov/CCP and nobody complained.

If North Korea had 1bn potential customers, we would be seeing Kim very differently.

We are cattle. It's all a 1984-ish sham.

Historically China has been so large and 'diverse' (not to be confused with DEI) (like India and Russia). It's not "one chinese person is just like anyone else". There are multiple Republics/States/etc. It takes an emperor to keep together an empire. And that usually requires (plenty of) violence.

Communism is built to make people suffer, remove individuality and requires total obedience and personal reformation to be the 'good citizen'. You and me both are EU citizens. We are all different and we respect/accept each other. In China if you disagree, you disappear. They would very much like to do the same to the rest of the world. And one day they will, just not yet. I hope they implode before they do (like all empires).

(apologies for the grim tone)(I suggest "Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8)

thread

dsignDec 2024

> I don't know what great inventions and technological leaps we are going to see in 2030, 2040, or 2050, but what I do know is that the benefits and wealth from them will be captured by the same class that is capturing everything today.

I have good news and bad news. The world doesn't stand still. There are some iterations that destroy the structure of society, after which a new structure must be built. The oligarchies of today will meet their end at some point. And, no amount of preemptive effort can prevent that. That's as the good news go, in as much as they are good news.

These are not my ideas exclusively. If you want to hear them from people that has dedicated a fair amount of time at exploring this subject and gathering data, I recommend these books:

- Capital in the Twenty-First Century, for an overview of historical change. You will find that the author agrees with you in many accounts.

- The Collapse of Complex Societies, by Josph A. Tainter.

- Principles for dealing with the changing world order.

The bad news is that the most likely iteration coming around the corner is human's lost of control of our societies in favor of machine intelligence. It's not going to be as "peaceful" as the rise of the post WWII world order, but I hope that we survive.

thread

hayst4ckJan 2024

Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order by Ray Dalio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

I think this video addresses the topic in question at a layman level.

thread

chubotJan 2023

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)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8

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 by monetary policy.

TBH I didn't come around to this until ~2020 ... In 2016, everyone I knew thought the sky was falling ... But I was living in wealthy area with a good job. Now that I'm a bit removed from that, I see that the rest of the country is having big problems

I think Jeff Bezos has said -- "I don't worry about next quarter -- it was already determined 5 or 10 years ago". Unfortunately the social trends for the US were determined 40 or 50 years ago. But that doesn't mean everyone should give up and do nothing! Don't be a nihilist

Honestly software is one of the places where you can create real wealth (not fake, extractive riches) with a few people. People in other industries aren't so lucky

(Related to a previous comment about gambling and crypto: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33910537 -- if huge portions of society engage in NEGATIVE SUM games, then that has consequences. I conjecture that gambling is commonly banned because societies that banned it are the ones that survived. Others went down in flames.)

thread