
Ray Dalio says the global economy is under threat - joeyespo
https://www.ccn.com/billionaire-ray-dalio-world-economy-threat-jobs/
======
philipkglass
If machines can produce every useful good and service better than humans --
including manufacturing copies of themselves -- then the global economy
(denominated in units of currency) might be under threat, but people will
materially prosper. It's not dollars or euros or renminbi that people really
need. People need goods and services. If the machines-do-everything technology
gets invented once, copies will soon spread globally [1].

The real problem is more likely to be the transitional turbulence. If self-
driving vehicles _do_ wipe out millions of truck driver jobs in the year 2029,
but automated doctors aren't ready until 2059, large groups of workers lose
income without seeing deflationary relief in the prices of services they need.

[1] The spread of maker machines could happen "legitimately" \-- Gates
Foundation or a similar organization financing freely shareable re-
implementations. It could also happen "illegally" \-- a government in a poorer
country will just decide to tell international patent/copyright holders to
pound sand in favor of their own domestic constitutents. This would be similar
to South Africa's treatment of HIV drug patents in the 1990s.

~~~
seibelj
The truck drivers who lose their jobs will get new ones. Same story has been
told for generations and it is never true. So-called AI won’t eliminate the
need for workers, they will just shift into new jobs.

No one shed a tear when the carriage drivers lost their jobs. Except maybe the
carriage drivers and their families.

~~~
netfl0
What did the carriage drivers do? Asking for a friend.

~~~
iancmceachern
Drive trucks

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throwaway8291
It seems very clear to the man on the street, the fights are getting more
fierce. Assets prices increase and the bottom 80% are getting squeezed out of
many things, slowly but surely: education, housing and with that also out of
participation in society.

There is literally nothing, that hints at progress at this point: Tech and
internet will has turned into permanent surveillance, the home surveillance is
rolled out, the internet of things and workspace will be next, allowing for
google analytics on labor.

And if workers complain too much, increase investments in software and data
tools and replace a bunch of wet ware with some tool; heck, half of the
"knowledge workers" today might be obsolete already.

The average person won't have much to laugh for the next few decades. We live
in a sad time, where the most miraculous things man can create (machines that
"think") will be the prime weapons of the owners against the non-owners. I
fear this will be a costly battle.

~~~
tenpies
The hilarious part to me is the elites saying "but look at the data". No. The
whole point is that we've reversed engineered the economy so that "inflation
is under 2%", meanwhile an entire generation is basically condemned to never
own their dwelling. Unemployment is "historically low" but that's because you
have people with Masters degrees driving for Uber and in the "gig" economy.
The stock market is performing tremendously, but that's because we've pumped
nearly 4 Trillion dollars into it beginning with Obama's presidency.

I am not sure how much longer it goes, but if there is an uprising it's going
to be brutal. It's not going to be just bankers and politicians, it's going to
come after the technocrats who helped engineer all this and the celebrities
that pretended everything was okay.

~~~
navigatesol
Home ownership rates for the under 35s are down, but not substantially. They
are also increasing.

Putting $4T "into the stock market" as if it's vaporized is simply nonsense.

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anon1m0us
>He sees “transferring money to people who are unproductive” [universal basic
income, UBI] as less optimal than finding a way for them to be productive.

Why can't we let the individual find a way to make themselves productive? And,
why do they _need_ to be productive? Some of my best times in life are
watching and playing games with my friends. Socializing. Loving people.

I, and most people I know, can look around and see things that need to be
done. If our lives aren't so focused on paying the bills all the time, we can
relax a bit and be creative.

I remember I used to get _great_ school lunches. I knew the cafeteria staff by
name and they knew me because I went back for seconds and thirds and
fourths... skinny as a bean pole. Lunches were made fresh every day. The staff
were there at 6am cooking for the kids. Fresh bread. I used to love watching
that dough bounce around in the industrial mixer. It was bigger than I was.

A decade after I was out of school, I saw one of the ladies and asked how the
school lunches were. She said they don't get to make them anymore. The menus
are decided in Washington DC now and they have very little control over what
is cooked or eaten. Kids don't come back for seconds and thirds and fourths
anymore.

The federal government took local control away from the schools and
homogenized everything and basically ruined it from what I remember.

Why do we think the federal government knows better how to manage our day to
day lives than we do ourselves? Get out of our kitchens and homes.

The government doesn't need to find a way for me to be productive. People who
need to be productive to keep their sanity will find a way. They'll clean
their bedrooms, volunteer in their communities. They won't be judged by what
their job is, but rather, what they do for themselves and the people around
them.

The need to grind out a day at the office or the shipyard or in the truck
hauling cargo saps a person's freewill.

We need more freewill in the world.

~~~
mc32
>”The need to grind out a day at the office or the shipyard or in the truck
hauling cargo saps a person's freewill.”

I’m not sure of that.

Couple of things. I’ve worked with working class people. They may complain
about the job or the boss, but if they didn’t do one of those jobs, they’d
feel less empowered.

I’ve heard people essentially say I don’t want to be on welfare but I can’t
get a job. So they'd prefer a job to being on the dole.

Two, people with lots of time and nothing to do tend to just while away time,
either in the form of any kind of entertainment or some times in counter
productive activities. Doing “make-work” actually gives people _some_ purpose.

I’m saying UBI will bring other unintended problems. I think UBI could be like
people who have dogs and give them all they need [like UBI] but don’t take
them out for walks. Work, any kind of work is like taking the dog out for a
walk.

~~~
zozbot234
People having "nothing to do" is a self-inflicted problem of modern societies.
There's plenty of stuff to do, all over the place. Just because it might not
meet some wholly-arbitrary standard of a 'living', 'sustainable' level of
productivity doesn't mean it's "make-work".

~~~
iknowalot
People will leave the mundane and repetitive to automation and focus on what
they find truly fulfilling, utilizing "creative intelligence".

Creative intelligence involves always striving for the new thoughts, fresh
ideas, novel ways to solve problems....repetition makes people mentally weak
and depressed.

Many of the problems we discuss today about humans in the era of automation
have already been addressed in ancient Indian philosophy (many millennia ago).
This isn't new....

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RickJWagner
Dalio unquestionably has had success with investing. But his ideas are often
called crazy. (i.e. the bond-heavy nature of his 'All Weather Portfolio'.)

He's also at odds with stalwarts like Warren Buffet, who point out that gold
doesn't really have a reason to be a hedge against a crash. It doesn't do
anything, it just looks pretty. Once people begin to figure that the emporer
has no clothes, gold will just be cheap, pretty metal.

Dalio is worth listening to, but with a large grain of salt, IMHO.

~~~
travisoneill1
On gold Dalio has been right for the last 6000 years and Buffet has been
wrong.

~~~
Supermancho
It's not clear what you're asserting. For raw return on investment, there is a
compelling analysis:

[https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/news/warren-...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/commodities/news/warren-
buffett-bashes-gold-2019-2-1027977003)

which demonstrates that Dalio has been wrong over time (as long as we have
been around, at least).

This does not preclude Dalio from being right about specific small periods of
time or decidedly in the future. So far, not so much.

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chroem-
As someone who likes to crack jokes at the expense of goldbugs, Dalio saying
to buy precious metals got my attention.

~~~
H8crilA
I mean gold will likely get expensive with the amount of outstanding debt
worldwide, explicit and off-the-books like underfunded pension liabilites and
health care costs. I.e. it's the value of all major currencies that will go
down.

Japan cannot ever have anything even close to 2% interest rates because at 2%
the central government will pay 100% of the tax take just to service interest
payments. This, of course, cannot continue forever without pushing down the
value of money, one way or another.

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scottlocklin
People taking seriously what a hedgefund manager says in a public speech... it
is to laugh.

If productivity were going up because of automation to the point where mass
unemployment is an issue, interest rates would be higher: the end. Anyone who
disagrees doesn't understand how finance works.

~~~
starbugs
That's an interesting thesis. Could you explain why?

~~~
scottlocklin
If automation were increasing producitivity, you could invest capital in it
and get giant returns, making capital more rare and valuable, as it would be
tied up in productive ventures. It isn't. Even freaking google is basically
punting on a basket of dumb ideas, absolutely none of which has worked out,
and none of which are likely to pan out, and (rationally) sitting on a huge
barrel of cash from their looting of the US media system. Therefore, negative
interest rates. Negative interest rates = negative productivity increases. So
it is, so it has always been.

That's what finance is! You loan money to people to do useful things with. If
there's nothing useful to do, the money isn't worth as much. Most of it, these
days, goes to dumb shit like real estate bubbles.

All you need do is look at times when human power over nature was obviously
increasing; capital was dear and interest rates where high because you could
invest in the Bessemer Process or the Concorde or the Haber process or, like,
the invention of computers and telecommunications. These days, we have ...
apps for your phone. Of course we have negative interest rates; there is
literally nothing to invest in.

~~~
mistermann
How does the creation of trillions of dollars of new capital out of thin air
fit into this theory?

~~~
Supermancho
Propping up the industries that are losses but whose failure would cause
massive instability and upheaval. Those in power, have no interest in this
outcome while they are in power. So Quantitative Easing part X and punt to the
next election cycle.

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teekert
If I guy that got awfully rich by shuffling money around instead of actually
producing anything of value gets scared, then I feel like perhaps the economy
may get a bit more fair. Bring it on.

~~~
adeptus
What you call "shuffling money around", other's call funding companies with
potential so they can sustain or accelerate their business, hire more staff,
develop new products, provide those products in new regions etc.

Investing is how you get rich in this world. Whether it's real estate, stocks,
bonds or any other non-depreciating asset classes. Investing is not without
risk. America would not be what it is today without investors risking their
money since at least the 1920's. If you think continuously successful
investors don't work for their money, then you are simply ignorant about the
complexities and time consumption that continuously successful investing
requires.

~~~
teekert
You mean the country where the rich get richer and are the only one enjoying
education and healthcare? The country where poor is the new "middle class"?

Money makes money in our current (imho diseased) economy, but it is coming
from somewhere.

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klaudius
People have been saying robots will take all the jobs and kill everyone for
centuries: [https://timeline.com/robots-have-been-about-to-take-all-
the-...](https://timeline.com/robots-have-been-about-to-take-all-the-jobs-for-
more-than-200-years-5c9c08a2f41d)

~~~
throwaway8291
There's a company in my town, hiring devs for a fully robotic kitchen setup.
Ingredients are deposited, machines cook meals. A single person can take care
of the joint. You can replace a $100k/month bill on personel for a mid-size
fast-food outlet with $10k/month for a few guys helping the machine. No
strikes, overwork, just ingredients, meals and a bit of maintenance.

Imagine, you are a 50 joint franchise, that's a whopping 50 mil per year in
savings (and few hundred people desperately looking for jobs).

~~~
telesilla
As long as the price of that food is lowered to reflect its mass-produced
nature, it seems fair: win-win for society. Then on (those more rare)
occasions when we want a superb michelin-level meal, we pay the fair price for
a human to prepare it.

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bognition
What is ccn?

~~~
enjoyyourlife
[https://www.ccn.com/about-us/](https://www.ccn.com/about-us/)

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HNLurker2
This is the same guy that wrote worthless self-help ("principles") and claims
capitalism is bad, not practicing what he preaches he also benefits the most
from it.

~~~
warlog
Agreed. Audio book was unlistenable. I had to tap out after the first few
vacuous chapters. This guy is talking his book, not reality. Buyer beware.

