The Changing World Order: Where We Are and Where We’re Going by Ray Dalio – Notes and Quotes
Eighth in a series of book reviews by The Froogal Stoodent
If you’ve read my review of Life and Work Principles, you know Ray Dalio is the founder of a hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates.
If you’ve watched his viral video, “How the Economic Machine Works,” you know Dalio has been sharing insight about economic matters for years.
For example, this video explains that while money is money, debt is also money. To explain this, imagine using a mortgage—which is debt—to purchase a house. The seller of the house accepts money from the bank, and the bank is accepting your promise to pay. So your promise to pay (mortgage debt) becomes the bank’s asset, and that promise enables you to purchase a house.
On a broader scale, expanding the amount of debt in circulation can cause some of the ups-and-downs of the so-called ‘business cycle.’
Well, The Changing World Order expands on that 30-minute video, by explaining these and other principles in greater detail, and also highlighting some of the broader world implications for the future. In fact, he and his team have created a video specifically to go along with this book, too.
Dalio made his unedited, working version of this book publicly available during 2020, when many businesses and organizations were closed down. This is the version I read, so it probably won’t be exactly the same as the final published version. Indeed, I identified places where a sharp editor would rephrase things, or insert punctuation, to make the point clearer and more easily readable.
And, of course, since I read this as a web page, there was no pagination, so I’ll have to simply specify the chapter instead of the usual page numbers.
But polished or not, Dalio’s insights are certainly helpful! So let’s dig in.
