[chubot]

It's true, but really it's both ... there is "progress" and there are also cycles. Dalio explicitly superimposes them on each other

I don't think I believed this until 2017 or 2020 or so, but it seems clear that the USA is on a natural downcycle and probably will be for several decades

I think the causes are pretty well laid out in the book - basically having the global reserve currency is kind of an unfair advantage, and it leads the population to become decadent and unproductive, it leads to institutional decay, etc.

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That brought to mind the tweet/slogan "what if your whole personality depends on low interest rates?", and now I see that something similar was discussed on Hacker News too:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33946342

Basically people live in a particular part of a cycle, which lasts longer than their lifetimes

(but there are also non-cyclical changes / progress, and yeah there are big flaws with trying to go back 1000 years)