What I Wish Ray Dalio Understood

Here's an example of what I'm always talking about - a super-intelligent and super-successful businessman with his own idea of how to solve things.

Not Only Can We Avoid War But We Can Have the Best Times Ever Ray Dalio's newsletter Principled Perspectives that has 246K subscribers (!)

Ray Dalio's words are in italic below and I will comment on each point. But in general, his suggestions indicate that even extremely intelligent people don't see the connection between all these things.

To have better times than ever we need to:

1) Get our finances in order through a mix of a) being more productive by investing in those things that make us more productive and benefit most people (such as education),?and b) engineering a "beautiful deleveraging" that spreads out and reduces the real debt liabilities and assets relative to real incomes.?

>> I'm all for improving education - especially if it teaches us from a young age how to get along here in a more sustainable way. And instills in us the importance of being a positive and contributing part of society.

2) Develop a strong and smart political middle that represents the majority of people and can defeat the extreme populist minority so that we can work and live well together.?

>> Don't expect the solution to come from this part of society - the people there are mainly only interested in holding onto their seat and all the power / money that comes with it.

3) Have rival countries develop agreements and protocols that would minimize the chances of military wars.

This won't happen until we start understanding what we're really dealing with - the growing human ego in our time. Powerful leaders in non-democratic countries have only one main tool for controlling the people - the army. It's going to take a lot of dismantling all the systems we built to destroy each other before they will be ready to give up their toys.

My Personal Favorite -

4) As for acts of nature, I will defer to others more knowledgeable than I am to suggest ways to cost-effectively deal with them.?

>> I love the way he understands that he's way out of his depth here when it comes to "acts of nature" - but even though he's not an expert in this area, he believes there is a cost-effective way of dealing with them. Meaning they can be solved (or prevented?) with money.

5) As for man’s ability to adapt and invent, I think that is naturally happening in the greatest way ever. That’s because of the development of technologies that help people think about how to make such improvements and because of the development of venture capital markets to finance entrepreneurs with good ideas in numbers and amounts that are unprecedented.?

>> Yes we need to adapt to the new conditions - but all the tech in the world won't help us unless we "invest" in becoming better humans. This doesn't mean we have to start giving away all our stuff - it's really about our attitude and intentions toward others more than anything else. If we all focused on contributing to the human network in a positive way, mainly with our thoughts and the things we say - things would be looking up.

Regarding his title - NOT ONLY CAN WE AVOID WAR BUT WE CAN HAVE THE BEST TIMES EVER ....

Yes, when we eliminate wars and all forms of violence and clashes from our world, it will mean that we're on our way to discovering a far better way of getting along here. But leaders will be very reluctant to let go of their toys until they start to unpack how the human ego works and why. How can we unpack it in a way that truly benefits humanity, rather than furthering certain people's agenda? By applying the Integral Method.