The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio

This is an video based on Ray Dalio's Book, The Changing World Order. Follow the footnote to learn more about Ray Dalio^[1]

Ray Dalio is a brilliant mind and a great mentor of mine from a distance. He is back at it again with this amazing video on his principles of dealing with a changing world order.

There is a lot to unpack from this video and there are also a lot of unanswering questions that I have.

From the get-go, he talks about how empires rise and fail and the various economic indicators that show this. I was amazing to see how well he measures them. They roughly included:

1. Education
2. Innovation
3. Competitiveness
4. Increased economic output
5. Increase share of global trade
6. Military strength
7. Reserve currency status

He attempts to share how to deal with the rise, top, decline of an empire as this has happened many times before. From the Dutch empire, British Empire, American Empire and now the rising Chinese Empire.

Funny enough, he doesn't give the advice to run away from the situation. Indeed he recommends that statesmen can change the impending situation by outlining 2 principle:

1. Earn more than we spend
2. Treat each other well

By doing so as individuals and collectively, we can change our future prospects and remain prosperous.

In the end, the goal is to be prosperous over a long period of time. Therefore, it looks to be that capitalism is great but it also has the seeds of it's own demise.

If we look at it from a global perseptive of many empires competing and borrowing knowledge from each other, the demise of one empire and the rise of another is not such a bad thing. It just means that they most situated empire to take the helm and lead the world to higher prosperity. The perks of being the top empire such as printing your currency without constraints, borrowing from saving lenders across the globe and global trade is awarded to the one who is best situated for it.

China is on the rise and if they are great for business and economic growth, then Africa should have no problem with them. Honestly speaking, the West has done nothing but underappreciate Africa and treat us like shit. With the knowledge we have gained, we are in better position to ditch the West and more to China for business. We can better defend ourselves from the exploitation, compared to colonalism, which shattered us as nations and empires.

It is better to be neutral for now as we settle our debts slowly with the West. However, there will come a time when we will have to pick a side. From the video's perspective, our choice should be China.