Personally, I found his chat with Lex Fridman [1] pretty good where he covers the same topics. I suspect it's hard to take a 570 page book [2] and get into bullet/talking points without the context. When I read the book over the 2021-2022 holiday break I honestly found it a bit stressful since he's pretty much listing historical/present day facts, along with the data to back it up, and that's hard to argue with (vs his opinions). Guess take it for what it's worth, but I found it hard to read the book, then take a look around, and not think he might be onto something.
I'm not so sure about his metrics on what makes a country declining and another rising. He gathers data like education level and debt and creates an overall score for each country.
He's been pushing this narrative for a while, and his Bridgewater fund has a heavy China tilt, but I'm also watching Polymatter videos which makes me a China bear.
He's been pushing this narrative for a while, and his Bridgewater fund has a heavy China tilt, but I'm also watching Polymatter videos which makes me a China bear.
Yeah, he is intellectually and emotionally invested in it. It's also unfalsifiable. America has been running large debts forever but has only become bigger and more successful post Covid, whereas other countries have become weaker relatively speaking. I think his ego is too invested in this model of the world to let it go.
It’s possible to believe his concerns regarding indebtedness of “The West” and the state of the current debt cycle while also disagreeing with his bullish view of Chinese economic growth / dominance.
This is my personal view after reading his most recent book.
It is a safe default bet that Dalio is wrong; because economies are highly chaotic and technology is very much a loose cannon in what can happen next.
But the US has debt levels where it is basically impossible that everyone is going to get back what they put in. Somebody has been conned into making a donation without realising it. And the #1 strategy to deal with any crisis seems to be money printing. If that political culture remains ascendant then all the alternatives will have to have really screwed up. Which is sadly plausible when looking at China - but they wouldn't have to change much to start whipping the US.
> America has been running large debts forever but has only become bigger and more successful post Covid, whereas other countries have become weaker relatively speaking
I am not sure what metrics are you using to quantify success post covid for America. Trust in institutions are all time low, there is a mental health epidemic, supply chain is still a mess and America is finally giving in to the Chinese demands withdrawing (at least partially) trade tariffs and going back to largest trade deficits as well as lately caving to the Saudis. Following the debacles in Afghanistan and Ukraine war, there isn’t exactly a foreign policy strength that America is able to project.
In all measures, these aren’t exactly success but hey we are selling weapons at record pace to everyone else so that may be it.
I like Lei’s Real Talk Videos (it’s like China Uncensored but more in-depth at least with some of her older content).
I discovered her channel when looking for videos on the Shanghai Clique and the infighting that goes on within the CCP.
Western Media is thin on that, they tend to portray the Chinese Government without any disfunction. Ironically, Chinese Media tends to portray United States the same way too.
Yeah I see I dont think Dalio is actually correct. I think he and bridgewater were the right place at the right time 30 years ago when they started. Returns at the fund actually havent been that amazing. I think he partly likes being in the public eye, and then its also good marketing for his firm.
Everyone who is giving interviews likes being in the public eye. It’s extremely easy not to give interviews - unless you did something like a big crime or are the center of a big story accidentally, you actually have to go out of your way to continue being famous.
It’s also why I’m suspect of everyone famous. It’s just such a warped personality that seeks and maintains a public persona. Not saying that they are evil or bad people - just that their motivations are very suspicious and you should be extremely critical of what a public person says. The vast majority of successful and wealthy people are not public figures and don’t try and parlay their opinions into personal fame.
He is a Sinophile - I sort of agreed with him till couple years back, but then looking at China's zero covid policy, Xi's autocratic rule on steroids and foreign policy gaffes and a distinct change in policy which doesn't really care about the economy - makes me wonder why he is still so bullish on China. Probably has some ulterior motives with his fund or just plain loves being in the media eye.
I think investors don't buy this because long term population health and state capacity are significantly more important 10, 20, 30 years down the line than short term disruptions, and that is why investors are bullish on China.
Shutting a port down for one month is bad, having a hundred million people struggle with long covid is a lot worse. The bull case is pretty simple. The country has governance that is effective enough to tackle problems that most other places have given up on, even if it isn't particularly pretty in the short run.
Is it wrong though? Maybe its because my immigrant (S. Asian) parents emphasized education heavily so they busted their ass to put me into the best public school districts. Believe me, being the poorest kid in school had its downsides, but doing well in school and sports was a great equalizer.
Now that I'm in my 30s and interact with the broader world, I can't help but realize that most people I meet outside of tech are... how do I say this? Not that bright? I'm talking people who can't add small numbers or multiply, and seem to have short term goals and interests. BTW these people are in the same socioeconomic level (or better, as many of them own property here within their family) as my family when we were brand new to this country.
In Los Angeles the schools are garbage and failing for the most part, and it is pretty sad to see the result - adults who can barely make ends meet and continue the cycle. Since I'm in the tech bubble, everyone else I hang out with is quite well to do and smart, but any time I've met people outside of this bubble I feel depressed and sad.
Like I said, I grew up in the districts where most of the people were focused on providing a good education for their kids. It was in the midwest suburbs right outside of the city metro, and my peers were involved in sports and also studying. Our football/basketball team were AP/honor roll students who also played in the orchestra, and most of them went on to higher education and have really good careers. When I see their Linkedin updates, I'm always happy to have been around such people who also motivated me.
I honestly believe that China, India, and other Asian countries will dominate the next century and beyond. They're pumping out engineers (people who can think, use their brain) while Americans talk shit about themselves and want to degrade. The USA needs to stop treating children like equals/adults (they're not, their brains are still developing) and focus on making sure their kids can think their way out of a box instead of crying or needing therapy (just stop giving them iPad games since they're 2 years old to make them shut up). We need to get off this addiction to instant gratification - that leads to mental retardation because when people don't have to think of alternatives or creative ways to do things, MOST people will just be lazy. We've proven this in animals, and we see it every day with people.
I'm honestly pondering if I should raise my family in the same midwestern suburbs I grew up in because I can't see my kids succeeding here in California. The schools suck, the people are not interested in education, and tech basically carries this state in terms of brainpower.
> Since I'm in the tech bubble, everyone else I hang out with is quite well to do and smart, but any time I've met people outside of this bubble I feel depressed and sad.
So what? You hang out with allegedly smart people, we produce a lot of them, some even provide the world with more utility then working at a FAANG. What point are you trying to make? Are you suggesting there are no unambitious people in Asia?
We have a lot going for us too - our political system relies on institutions, not personalities. We still have the best of everything. Corruption and Nepotism is minimal - your family surname doesn't matter (you are a self-proclaimed example of this). The cream more easily rises to the top.
> I honestly believe that China, India, and other Asian countries will dominate the next century and beyond. They're pumping out engineers (people who can think, use their brain) while Americans talk shit about themselves and want to degrade.
> I can't help but realize that most people I meet outside of tech are... how do I say this? Not that bright? I'm talking people who can't add small numbers or multiply, and seem to have short term goals and interests.
I thought that way when I was younger, judging people by the skills I excelled at. Not only was I mistaken but the attitude was damaging to myself and others.
Unskilled and unaware is a thing: it takes wisdom, maturity and focus to learn to recognise the excess talents and abilities of others in areas that oneself is weak in. Looking at myself and understanding where I have an IQ of 60 is painful, but necessary.
Oddly enough, the more I look for talents in the people I know, the more I see the excess talents of other people: especially soft-skills and non-scholastic skills. We all have a lot to learn. The smartest people I know recognise they are dumb in significant areas of their lives. The stupid people I know can be snowflakes: often overconfident and often overvalue their profession.
Globalization has favored migration, and this is built in to your background: ergo, "these people are not smart and don't work hard like I did...so I should exit" is your first inclination. It's a very common sentiment through America that somewhere else can be escaped to, that there's a new frontier to homestead.
But... I have been through California's most competitive schools. The ones in which everyone grubbed for grades, and therefore pursued exactly what you are romanticizing. Yeah, you get some education, but the course material mattered very little. All the serious challenges that have left an impression decades on were presented by other life events like kids who commit suicide(an occurrence that is depressingly frequent at those competitive schools). I do not think of myself as a winner, but a survivor. The moments where genuine flourishing took place are likewise things that were not really about the school system or what my parents did, but the whole confluence of factors.
California - as a society - is, in fact, facing and working through those challenges of how to make its society work without relying on exit, because exit simply means others get dumped on. Making it a place worth living in is not about working hard, or voting in the right government, but about answering all the ethical questions involved in creating that society with clarity and intellectual honesty, one day and one incident at a time. The parlor tricks necessary to earn a tech salary and then uproot oneself are simple stuff in comparison.
And Asia is not gaining in terms of competitiveness: it's gotten wealthier and older too, and it has started having the same kinds of issues, of younger Japanese going "hikkikomori" or Chinese workers "lying flat".
If China and India are going to be so great, why aren’t they so great already? Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Korea all industrialized faster and have a higher standard of living - all did it in the 1980s - 40 years ago.
Based on my experience in the valley, there are many extremely bright folks in tech who have failed miserably at achieving happiness, beyond a short term, insecure feeling of superiority when they win a small battle in life. The overarching theme I encounter is unhappiness. Those aren't the type of people who build thriving societies. They're the type of folks who miss the forest for the trees and end up deeply unhappy with every aspect of their lives beyond their careers.
For me, the contrast is most obvious when looking at Southern California vs the Bay Area. People are noticably less happy in the Bay Area. It's nothing like life among the "happy idiots" of SoCal.
Whatever you do, I hope you find satisfaction in life and teach your children to achieve the same.
> being the poorest kid in school had its downsides
What was it like ? Just genuinely curious. I am an immigrant and a parent. We live in good school district, but we're not wealthy. Just want to learn from your experience, so I could understand what my kids might/will have to go through at school.
>> I honestly believe that China, India, and other Asian countries will dominate the next century and beyond.
Before they do that, they'll have to solve similar problems the US is facing right now in terms of inequality. In fact they are running into these issues even now.
However there is one major difference that India and China have to contend with which would be a big problem. And that is scale - the very thing that propels their growth will be a major obstacle. It is one thing to have inequality in a country of 300M, it is another to have to contend with 500M+ disgruntled citizens.
And sadly, looking at the state of affairs, I am not sure if the leadership of both the countries are equipped/want to deal with it.
> The USA needs to stop treating children like equals/adults (they're not, their brains are still developing) and focus on making sure their kids can think their way out of a box instead of crying or needing therapy (just stop giving them iPad games since they're 2 years old to make them shut up). We need to get off this addiction to instant gratification - that leads to mental retardation because when people don't have to think of alternatives or creative ways to do things, MOST people will just be lazy. We've proven this in animals, and we see it every day with people.
What a complete load of horseshit.
The US is at the forefront of dealing with the realities involved with living in an information-centered society. Therapy and a broader recognition of mental health issues as being significant are incredibly useful ideas that are helping society deal with the problems that come with this new age. Raising kids as being autonomous and having identities independent of their parents is absolutely the correct way of recognizing them as people and not just parent’s little helpers or minions.
There is legitimate criticism to be made of a society addicted to social media and swimming in disinformation. But both the criticism and the remedies suggested in this comment are complete nonsense and would do little to alleviate the situation. If your solution is “sterner parenting” you are simply going to have more rebellious kids who end up doing even worse things… we have been down this path before.
A significant fraction of the US seems to have problem to adjust to the notion that in the next decades China will become the clear number 1 country in many fields, and the US will be to China, what Germany is to the US.(Similar on a per capita basis, about 1/4 in absolute numbers)
Plus most of their infrastructure is poorly built. On this YouTube channel they lived in China for a decade and rode through it on motorcycles documenting their adventures. It is pretty amazing https://www.youtube.com/c/ADVChina you learn beyond a few big Chinese cities pretty much everything is falling apart, shoddily built with no inspections, and not as rich as the government portrays. Demographics is certainly a problem but everything else is too... China is a house of cards.
Self inflicted moderate demographics problems to delay a massive one. Without family planning, PRC would be at 1.7B people. Currently at 1.4B more than 600M are, to be blunt, excess people - underedcuated cohorts that subsists in informal economy that can't be integrated into modern consumption economy. PRC would be tackling a much grimmer demographic bomb if it were not for restricting births.
Zeihan has the same thesis, plus insurmountable geographical challenges.
Really hard to root for a country that now has a population rhomboid instead of a population pyramid. Soon to turn into an inverse pyramid aka a reverse ponzi where the old work to keep the few young alive.
Agreed. Scott Rozelle's _Invisible China_ is very much worth a read on this topic.
The author is not a China hater - far from it. But he lays out in sobering detail the substantial demographic challenge they still face and why they may not escape what is known as at the middle income trap. If anything, I came away with the understanding that while many fear a rising China, it is a China that stumbles that can be more worrisome.
That is certainly true but they also seem willing to go much further than any country has before in an attempt to reverse their population growth decline.
I think a large part depends on if they are able to translate their infrastructure spending away from unprofitable or marginally profitable ventures like bridges into high-tech nuclear industry, more battery and solar tech, semi-conductors & lithography, etc.
They are certainly capable (we saw that with EVs, batteries and solar already) but proof will be in the pudding.
Is he listened to by serious people ? He sure has a following on youtube, people are parroting his ideas on a weekly basis.. whether he's right or wrong only matters if people in control are influenced too..
> but I'm also watching Polymatter videos which makes me a China bear.
Shouldn't base your worldview on silly youtube videos. What are the odds that grifters peddling youtube videos are experts on china, mrbeast, ikea, india, dennis rodman, etc?
These people just make videos targeted for their group of dumb masses in order to sell ads.
Just go to their youtube page and ask yourself what are the odds that the grifters running polymatter are experts on any of the topics they pumped videos out for? The answer is none. What they do is most likely analyze what types of garbage their subs may like and create garbage for these people.
You'd think HN would be the last place anyone would take polymatters seriously. But from the comments, many actually look to youtube grifters and outright propagandists ( zeihan ) to form their opinions.
Yes. YouTube educational videos are fun to watch because they surface “cult” or “not widely known” knowledge in a fun way.
But they are also availability machines usually not backed by domain knowledge or deep research. They’re designed to grab views. Wendover productions for instance has lots of great videos about transportation (especially aviation) which are mind blowing. The creator Sam is also just a college student in his 20s with no deep domain knowledge on any of the subjects he covers — his expertise is perhaps enthusiasm, knowing how to do research into trivia type knowledge, and making great videos about it.
Most Wendover videos are good, but there are some in which he is pretty wrong.
We should stop idolizing billionaires and looking at them for advice. They have figured out how to engage in certain segments of the market but I don't see why they should have a worthwhile insight into how the country should be run. They seem to mostly push for things that benefit them personally without much regard for the rest.
This guy wants to act like he’s doing so much for the world. He literally made some guess and it paid of well yet, we’re trusting him like this century’s fucking Nostradamus?
> Huge part of his riches came from investing in a company that poisons people with sugar water.
This and that are 2 different things. You may disagree with where he invest his money or his morales but that has nothing to do with his intelligence and his ability to invest which is what the parent comment is saying Dalio does not have.
"We're not in a recession, we're in the early stages of a depression. A depression is a self-feeding liquidity crisis - it's a cash-flow squeeze that occurs when the economy turns down, inventories are being sold, borrowings increased, and liquidity reduced."
- Raymond T. Dalio, New York Times, Jun 27, 1982
"For decades the numbers have told us that each time the capacity utilization figure moves over 85 percent, the inflation rate rises, and also that each inflation cycle tends to peak at a higher level than the preceding one. During this inflation cycle, we expect capacity utilization to cross the 85 percent line by early 1985, when the CPI should be running at an annual rate of 7.8 percent and well on its way to a cyclical peak of about 11.5 percent sometime in 1986."
- Raymond T. Dalio, New York Times, Jun 17, 1984
If you google "ray dalio 1980" you'll see he's talked about that being his biggest mistake and massive learning opportunity [1, 2, 3]. He even dedicated a chapter to it in his book (chapter 3) [4]. It's sort of hard to fault someone for being wrong 40 years ago and think they have nothing new to contribute.
Suspect we'd all be completely screwed if we were wrong, never learned from it, and just continued on. No idea if he's right or wrong but guess time will tell. What you're implying here though, that because someone was wrong at a point in time, learned from it, evolved and changed their way of thinking, then think that all their future stuff is tainted somehow, seems pretty strange.
I'm not impressed with his story about what he learned from it. He basically says he learned that sometimes he can be wrong. No indication of whether he's learned when he's more likely to be wrong or right.
If you must simp for billionaires, Jim Simons, Bill Gates, and the Collison brothers are somewhat more interesting people IMO.
Dalio's interview with Tyler Cowan [1] was embarrassing. He was totally unable to back up any of his opinions with a coherent argument. His performance was worse than that of any other Cowan guest by an order of magnitude. I'm reluctant to take anything he says seriously after listening to that.
I saw one with Tom Bilyeu [1] where Dalio opens with how bad crime is in Chicago and New York. While those metros do have a fair amount of crime, you actually have more violent crime, per capita, in a lot of smaller cities like Memphis, Little Rock, Odessa, and Shreveport [2]. Politicians and others spend a lot of time and effort calling out crime rates in certain giant metros, while ignoring higher crime rates in their own back yard.
Of course smaller cities will have more per capita. They don’t have massive universities or large companies or whatever to offset the violent parts of town.
I’m sure you can draw a few square blocks in Chicago with the highest concentration of crime and then, voilà, that section has the highest crime rate per capita.
America has been stuck at stages "9-15" forever it would seem: lots of debt, foreign interventionism, huge and forever-widening wealth inequality, some social unrest, etc. Either the model is wrong or America is uniquely resilient. I think both. Investing in education is not good enough: you need those outliers who create major tech companies and innovation. Counties like brazil and Turkey have compulsory education like the US, but are not nearly as successful on a per capita basis. I don't think Dalio's model is correct here, sorry to say.
The parallels between Dalio’s ideas and those of William Strauss and Neil Howe (The Fourth Turning) make me wonder if he read their works and based his own theories off theirs.
Readit News
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TISMidxdZoc
[2] https://www.amazon.ca/Changing-World-Order-Nations-Succeed/d...
He's been pushing this narrative for a while, and his Bridgewater fund has a heavy China tilt, but I'm also watching Polymatter videos which makes me a China bear.
Yeah, he is intellectually and emotionally invested in it. It's also unfalsifiable. America has been running large debts forever but has only become bigger and more successful post Covid, whereas other countries have become weaker relatively speaking. I think his ego is too invested in this model of the world to let it go.
This is my personal view after reading his most recent book.
But the US has debt levels where it is basically impossible that everyone is going to get back what they put in. Somebody has been conned into making a donation without realising it. And the #1 strategy to deal with any crisis seems to be money printing. If that political culture remains ascendant then all the alternatives will have to have really screwed up. Which is sadly plausible when looking at China - but they wouldn't have to change much to start whipping the US.
I am not sure what metrics are you using to quantify success post covid for America. Trust in institutions are all time low, there is a mental health epidemic, supply chain is still a mess and America is finally giving in to the Chinese demands withdrawing (at least partially) trade tariffs and going back to largest trade deficits as well as lately caving to the Saudis. Following the debacles in Afghanistan and Ukraine war, there isn’t exactly a foreign policy strength that America is able to project.
In all measures, these aren’t exactly success but hey we are selling weapons at record pace to everyone else so that may be it.
Citation needed, not clear how America has become more successful post covid.
I discovered her channel when looking for videos on the Shanghai Clique and the infighting that goes on within the CCP.
Western Media is thin on that, they tend to portray the Chinese Government without any disfunction. Ironically, Chinese Media tends to portray United States the same way too.
https://youtube.com/c/LeisRealTalk
Polymatter is great though. At least the videos on China (like the demographics one) seem well researched and have a unique take on the subject.
It’s also why I’m suspect of everyone famous. It’s just such a warped personality that seeks and maintains a public persona. Not saying that they are evil or bad people - just that their motivations are very suspicious and you should be extremely critical of what a public person says. The vast majority of successful and wealthy people are not public figures and don’t try and parlay their opinions into personal fame.
It's been amazing for his personal wealth, that much is true though
I think investors don't buy this because long term population health and state capacity are significantly more important 10, 20, 30 years down the line than short term disruptions, and that is why investors are bullish on China.
Shutting a port down for one month is bad, having a hundred million people struggle with long covid is a lot worse. The bull case is pretty simple. The country has governance that is effective enough to tackle problems that most other places have given up on, even if it isn't particularly pretty in the short run.
Now that I'm in my 30s and interact with the broader world, I can't help but realize that most people I meet outside of tech are... how do I say this? Not that bright? I'm talking people who can't add small numbers or multiply, and seem to have short term goals and interests. BTW these people are in the same socioeconomic level (or better, as many of them own property here within their family) as my family when we were brand new to this country.
In Los Angeles the schools are garbage and failing for the most part, and it is pretty sad to see the result - adults who can barely make ends meet and continue the cycle. Since I'm in the tech bubble, everyone else I hang out with is quite well to do and smart, but any time I've met people outside of this bubble I feel depressed and sad.
Like I said, I grew up in the districts where most of the people were focused on providing a good education for their kids. It was in the midwest suburbs right outside of the city metro, and my peers were involved in sports and also studying. Our football/basketball team were AP/honor roll students who also played in the orchestra, and most of them went on to higher education and have really good careers. When I see their Linkedin updates, I'm always happy to have been around such people who also motivated me.
I honestly believe that China, India, and other Asian countries will dominate the next century and beyond. They're pumping out engineers (people who can think, use their brain) while Americans talk shit about themselves and want to degrade. The USA needs to stop treating children like equals/adults (they're not, their brains are still developing) and focus on making sure their kids can think their way out of a box instead of crying or needing therapy (just stop giving them iPad games since they're 2 years old to make them shut up). We need to get off this addiction to instant gratification - that leads to mental retardation because when people don't have to think of alternatives or creative ways to do things, MOST people will just be lazy. We've proven this in animals, and we see it every day with people.
I'm honestly pondering if I should raise my family in the same midwestern suburbs I grew up in because I can't see my kids succeeding here in California. The schools suck, the people are not interested in education, and tech basically carries this state in terms of brainpower.
So what? You hang out with allegedly smart people, we produce a lot of them, some even provide the world with more utility then working at a FAANG. What point are you trying to make? Are you suggesting there are no unambitious people in Asia?
We have a lot going for us too - our political system relies on institutions, not personalities. We still have the best of everything. Corruption and Nepotism is minimal - your family surname doesn't matter (you are a self-proclaimed example of this). The cream more easily rises to the top.
> I honestly believe that China, India, and other Asian countries will dominate the next century and beyond. They're pumping out engineers (people who can think, use their brain) while Americans talk shit about themselves and want to degrade.
"Pumping out" is the key phrase here.
I thought that way when I was younger, judging people by the skills I excelled at. Not only was I mistaken but the attitude was damaging to myself and others.
Unskilled and unaware is a thing: it takes wisdom, maturity and focus to learn to recognise the excess talents and abilities of others in areas that oneself is weak in. Looking at myself and understanding where I have an IQ of 60 is painful, but necessary.
Oddly enough, the more I look for talents in the people I know, the more I see the excess talents of other people: especially soft-skills and non-scholastic skills. We all have a lot to learn. The smartest people I know recognise they are dumb in significant areas of their lives. The stupid people I know can be snowflakes: often overconfident and often overvalue their profession.
But... I have been through California's most competitive schools. The ones in which everyone grubbed for grades, and therefore pursued exactly what you are romanticizing. Yeah, you get some education, but the course material mattered very little. All the serious challenges that have left an impression decades on were presented by other life events like kids who commit suicide(an occurrence that is depressingly frequent at those competitive schools). I do not think of myself as a winner, but a survivor. The moments where genuine flourishing took place are likewise things that were not really about the school system or what my parents did, but the whole confluence of factors.
California - as a society - is, in fact, facing and working through those challenges of how to make its society work without relying on exit, because exit simply means others get dumped on. Making it a place worth living in is not about working hard, or voting in the right government, but about answering all the ethical questions involved in creating that society with clarity and intellectual honesty, one day and one incident at a time. The parlor tricks necessary to earn a tech salary and then uproot oneself are simple stuff in comparison.
And Asia is not gaining in terms of competitiveness: it's gotten wealthier and older too, and it has started having the same kinds of issues, of younger Japanese going "hikkikomori" or Chinese workers "lying flat".
For me, the contrast is most obvious when looking at Southern California vs the Bay Area. People are noticably less happy in the Bay Area. It's nothing like life among the "happy idiots" of SoCal.
Whatever you do, I hope you find satisfaction in life and teach your children to achieve the same.
What was it like ? Just genuinely curious. I am an immigrant and a parent. We live in good school district, but we're not wealthy. Just want to learn from your experience, so I could understand what my kids might/will have to go through at school.
Before they do that, they'll have to solve similar problems the US is facing right now in terms of inequality. In fact they are running into these issues even now.
However there is one major difference that India and China have to contend with which would be a big problem. And that is scale - the very thing that propels their growth will be a major obstacle. It is one thing to have inequality in a country of 300M, it is another to have to contend with 500M+ disgruntled citizens.
And sadly, looking at the state of affairs, I am not sure if the leadership of both the countries are equipped/want to deal with it.
Deleted Comment
What a complete load of horseshit.
The US is at the forefront of dealing with the realities involved with living in an information-centered society. Therapy and a broader recognition of mental health issues as being significant are incredibly useful ideas that are helping society deal with the problems that come with this new age. Raising kids as being autonomous and having identities independent of their parents is absolutely the correct way of recognizing them as people and not just parent’s little helpers or minions.
There is legitimate criticism to be made of a society addicted to social media and swimming in disinformation. But both the criticism and the remedies suggested in this comment are complete nonsense and would do little to alleviate the situation. If your solution is “sterner parenting” you are simply going to have more rebellious kids who end up doing even worse things… we have been down this path before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_median_ag...
A significant fraction of the US seems to have problem to adjust to the notion that in the next decades China will become the clear number 1 country in many fields, and the US will be to China, what Germany is to the US.(Similar on a per capita basis, about 1/4 in absolute numbers)
Wishful thinking is a terrible basis to plan.
Really hard to root for a country that now has a population rhomboid instead of a population pyramid. Soon to turn into an inverse pyramid aka a reverse ponzi where the old work to keep the few young alive.
The author is not a China hater - far from it. But he lays out in sobering detail the substantial demographic challenge they still face and why they may not escape what is known as at the middle income trap. If anything, I came away with the understanding that while many fear a rising China, it is a China that stumbles that can be more worrisome.
I think a large part depends on if they are able to translate their infrastructure spending away from unprofitable or marginally profitable ventures like bridges into high-tech nuclear industry, more battery and solar tech, semi-conductors & lithography, etc.
They are certainly capable (we saw that with EVs, batteries and solar already) but proof will be in the pudding.
Shouldn't base your worldview on silly youtube videos. What are the odds that grifters peddling youtube videos are experts on china, mrbeast, ikea, india, dennis rodman, etc?
These people just make videos targeted for their group of dumb masses in order to sell ads.
Just go to their youtube page and ask yourself what are the odds that the grifters running polymatter are experts on any of the topics they pumped videos out for? The answer is none. What they do is most likely analyze what types of garbage their subs may like and create garbage for these people.
You'd think HN would be the last place anyone would take polymatters seriously. But from the comments, many actually look to youtube grifters and outright propagandists ( zeihan ) to form their opinions.
But they are also availability machines usually not backed by domain knowledge or deep research. They’re designed to grab views. Wendover productions for instance has lots of great videos about transportation (especially aviation) which are mind blowing. The creator Sam is also just a college student in his 20s with no deep domain knowledge on any of the subjects he covers — his expertise is perhaps enthusiasm, knowing how to do research into trivia type knowledge, and making great videos about it.
Most Wendover videos are good, but there are some in which he is pretty wrong.
Huge part of his riches came from investing in a company that poisons people with sugar water.
This is not the kind of mind I want to follow when trying to write our collective future.
This and that are 2 different things. You may disagree with where he invest his money or his morales but that has nothing to do with his intelligence and his ability to invest which is what the parent comment is saying Dalio does not have.
But the idea that “oh he’s wealthy so what he says is important” is a bit odd when you take a step back.
I mean if Bill Gates says something about software I’m all ears. Something about healthcare? The fuck does he know about that?
Dead Comment
"For decades the numbers have told us that each time the capacity utilization figure moves over 85 percent, the inflation rate rises, and also that each inflation cycle tends to peak at a higher level than the preceding one. During this inflation cycle, we expect capacity utilization to cross the 85 percent line by early 1985, when the CPI should be running at an annual rate of 7.8 percent and well on its way to a cyclical peak of about 11.5 percent sometime in 1986." - Raymond T. Dalio, New York Times, Jun 17, 1984
Industrial production from Jun 1982 through Jun 1984: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=rU2
Inflation from Jun 1984 through Jun 1986: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=rU3
Suspect we'd all be completely screwed if we were wrong, never learned from it, and just continued on. No idea if he's right or wrong but guess time will tell. What you're implying here though, that because someone was wrong at a point in time, learned from it, evolved and changed their way of thinking, then think that all their future stuff is tainted somehow, seems pretty strange.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/04/billionaire-ray-dalio-was-on...
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/bridgewater-ray-dalio-lesson...
[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephaniedenning/2018/01/23/is-...
[4] https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Life-Work-Ray-Dalio/dp/150...
If you must simp for billionaires, Jim Simons, Bill Gates, and the Collison brothers are somewhat more interesting people IMO.
> Two (or more) of his predictions proved wrong. Therefore, he lacks credibility?
Hedge fund managers make wrong predictions all the time. Did you find a systemic flaw in his approach?
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9D0ElcV8DA
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-6bv8_pj-E 2. https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/the-most-dangerous-cities-i...
Of course smaller cities will have more per capita. They don’t have massive universities or large companies or whatever to offset the violent parts of town.
I’m sure you can draw a few square blocks in Chicago with the highest concentration of crime and then, voilà, that section has the highest crime rate per capita.