★★★★★ 5
Phenomenal book, one major criticism
Format: Kindle
Great book. Dalio does a remarkable job seeing the bigger picture and providing confidence through historical events/ever repeating cycles that you can predict at a high level what is coming next for a given country or the world and plan accordingly. The corkscrew of evolution analogy is a perfect one, where the human race has up and down cycles but always trends up longer term thanks to technological innovation.
My one criticism is he speaks out of both sides of his mouth in one instance, presumably because he doesn’t want to upset any high ranking politicians or leaders he may be friends with, which I found to be disappointing.
On the one hand, he notes at the start of the book that no two democracies have waged war with each other, wars have only been fought between dictators/police states and democracies or just dictators/police states.
Then later on when discussing China, he all but excuses and rationalizes their increasingly authoritarian state, as seen by Xi crowning himself leader until death and abolishing the precedent of 2 5 year term limits as of 2018. He blesses the Chinese approach of a few rulers knowing what’s best for all, as if those rulers are acting in the broader interest of Chinese people, and that’s an acceptable alternative to democratic rule. He cites the recent video game ban as having merit or at least being understandable, suggesting that he thinks the ends can justify the means. All the while there’s no mention of the atrocities of Mao under this authoritarian type of rule, no mention of the Muslim genocide going on now, the suppression of free speech and jailings and beating and murders of those that oppose the current regime, no mention of internet censorship, etc.
To bring the criticism full circle, he doesn’t link his first point on wars and authoritarians always being involved in them, with the fact that China is an authoritarian state and therefore it’s rise threatens the free world and human progress. Ironically, he does correctly acknowledge China’s opening up to market and establishment of capitalist principles for rocketing them toward the US in terms of power, while refuses to critique the political system despite its history of failings, violence and pain. Russia invading Ukraine couldn’t drive this point (ie the civil or political system being as important as the economic system to the long term success of a country and world peace) home any harder.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 12, 2022
