# The Changing World Order Author: ## Review If I had not read a number of books on "macrohistory" then I would have rated this a 5 star book, and it would have been one of the greatest books of all time. But, like Dalio, I have also been diving deep on this topic in recent years. I've been working my way through books and ideas about how the world evolves over time and the causal mechanisms underlying historical change. It illuminates the flaws in Dalio's thinking. The Changing World Order does two things really well. It provides an excellent (truly excellent) overview of the major changes and puts them into a neat intuitive framework. I agree with many of his determinants and the effect they had on world events. Education leads to innovation, leads to growth, leads to dominance, leads to complacency, etc etc. The book gives a good intuition for dynamics and how change in one variable leads to another. It also provides ideas for how to make decisions. I will also say that this book gave me a newfound respect and obsession about Dalio. The way he words things and phrases them helped me finally see that he has a deep appreciation for epistomology. It's hard to see because he intentionally uses clear and simple language (which is a good way to write). As an example, the way he describes a model as a way the world works, requiring both empirical evidence and coherence with intuition is something you can only learn and know from struggling with this issues for years (and after reading a lot of J.S. Mill, Popper, etc along the way). But I have big issues with the book. The mechanics of historical change are oversimplified, often comically so, in order to fit a story and also to set him up nicely for his view of the future (China becomes the new global power, the dollar declines, technological innovation accelerates). I don't necessarily disagree but the way he gets their is riddled with holes: Education leads to innovation, innovation leads to growth and superiority. China is investing in (and catching up in) education and innovation therefore they will dominate. What about the fact that the US was made up of immigrants who were not well educated? What about the lack of a central government to direct investment top down? How did the Netherlands dominate spain, england dominate the netherlands, and the us dominate england? And how exactly does inequality lead to class conflict? I also struggle with these questions but it was not because of anything the government did. In fact each of these communities had an almost dissident ideology that favored the individual pursuit of a better life and each had increasingly freer markets that allocated resources more effectively. It was a bottom up process of economic interaction. Great book, but less meat than other (more dense) books on the topic. ## Key Ideas ## Related