[ahartmetz]

About your point 2, can you summarize what you heard about Bridgewater Associates from people who were there? I also stopped reading the book, probably further in than you did, and I felt uneasy about Dalio's description because it seemed internally inconsistent given rudimentary knowledge about working environments and their psychology. He felt like a good boss because people wanted to work at Bridgewater ($$$) and nobody criticized him much - but probably, people had reason to do so but just didn't dare to.

I also wonder what their actual competitive advantage was. My guess is Dalio himself had a good way to think about economic questions, and that they used not-too-simplified computer modeling before most others.