Bridgewater’s Ray Dalio on divisions, Bitcoin and why a Manhattan Project-like investment is needed now

Over the last few years, the billionaire hedge fund founder Ray Dalio has seen signs of a society at risk: widening income inequality; deepening political divisions; increasing levels of debt and low interest rates, which weaken central banks; the rise of a new global power in China. He has long been convinced that you could see where the world was going by understanding historical cycles. Too often, he says, we look for lessons from our own lives when the real patterns play out over generations. And based on historical understanding, today’s wealth and political chasms point to a historic fall.

I’m an optimist in general, so every time I talk to Ray I’m hoping he’s found some evidence that we’re pulling back from the cliff. Yesterday’s #ThisIsWorking discussion didn’t provide any. Early into the pandemic, Ray told me that the No. 1 thing he was looking for was people finding ways to come together to solve common problems. That’s not happening. 

“I think it's now more apparent to probably all of your audience that there are irreconcilable differences, that people at both sides [of the political spectrum]… have greater levels of extremism and actually want to damage each other,” he said. “I believe that when the causes people are behind are more important than the system for resolving differences and bringing them together, the system is in jeopardy. So no, it hasn't been good and it's unlikely to be good.”

Ray talked about what he’d personally like to see happen: investments in education, in efforts to shrink income disparity. But when it came to actual policy initiatives, he avoided getting descriptive and instead said we should start from a goal and work backward. Success is anything that forces people from across the aisles to work together toward a common outcome. He invoked the building of the atomic bomb, saying we needed a Manhattan Project-like gathering where “everybody agrees that there needs to be a form of restructuring. Have smart people, bi-partisan dealing with the changes that are necessary.”  

Check out the video replay or podcast, to dive deeper into what he’s seeing and his response to member questions. I’d also recommend reading some of the articles he cited in our talk: Chapters 8 and 9 from his Changing World Order series and “What I really think of Bitcoin.” 

One last note: I started this conversation with something personal and unquestionably, more important. In December, Ray’s son Devon was killed in a car crash. Ray’s taken the brave and, I think, generous step of writing on LinkedIn about his experience and his pain. I’ve been amazed at the response from members. Ray said the same: “I can't thank your audiences enough. When I first went on social media I thought, ‘Wow, I don't know if I should do that.’ And then, over a period of time, there's actually been a relationship built. The quality of the exchanges was very meaningful, maybe more meaningful than any other exchanges we've had. Because when you have a death of somebody, a loved one, for me the death of a son, my first born son, [it] was the most devastating experience, more important to me than my own life or anything else. The ability that we could have that kind of exchange and a sense of relationship, a real relationship, that was surprising and very satisfying. So I want to thank those who participated in that exchange and helped me.”