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A review by jakeyjake
The Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail by Ray Dalio
Dalio has an interesting reading of recent dominant world powers and why it changed from the Dutch to British to USA. He speculates that the patterns he's observed point to Chinese Yuan becoming the new 'reserve currency.' The idea of a 'reserve currency' was new to me, but made sense after reading his breakdown. And the further insights about the cycle of a dominant economy taking on debt (because other countries want to use the 'reserve currency') leading to economic growth, and the increase in wages and living standards of workers in the dominant economy and how it all naturally leads to a breaking point and handover to another economy on the rise... was all kind of interesting.
That said, Ray Dalio never struck me as anything more than a shrewd investor thinking about how to make good investments. I don't recall him spending any time discussing the social implications of world powers focusing on economic growth over all else or anything more than a passing mention of slavery or taking advantage of workers in order to grow the economy. Maybe he didn't think it was relevant to this book or maybe he doesn't care much about those things, but I would've appreciated at least more acknowledgement of the human impacts of changing world orders instead of what more often felt like a suave, rich-guy-teaches-you-how-to-be-rich history lecture.
That said, Ray Dalio never struck me as anything more than a shrewd investor thinking about how to make good investments. I don't recall him spending any time discussing the social implications of world powers focusing on economic growth over all else or anything more than a passing mention of slavery or taking advantage of workers in order to grow the economy. Maybe he didn't think it was relevant to this book or maybe he doesn't care much about those things, but I would've appreciated at least more acknowledgement of the human impacts of changing world orders instead of what more often felt like a suave, rich-guy-teaches-you-how-to-be-rich history lecture.