Over the last few years, Dalio has been an articulate chronicler of macro economic, political, and historical transitions. I own all of the books he's written on these topics, and while I haven't read them all front-to-back, I find his argumentation compelling and the presentation clear. I've sometimes wondered what I'd do if I was rich as fuck, if I could hire a team of lackeys to help me produce great works. Dalio is an interesting example of what someone has done in those circumstances.
As a bitcoiner, I spent years wondering why he didn't find btc worthy of remark in his analysis, given how compatible his framework is with btc's principles and ethos. He'd get right to the edge and then turn away. Of course, in the last year or so he has come around, though not so far as many bitcoiners would like.
Anyway, his most recent post pulls from that extensive body of work. It's sobering.
The United States is now a tinderbox. Nearly a third of Americans (30%) say people may have to resort to violence in order to get the country back on track, according to the latest PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. Pew Research Center (Sept–Oct 2025) found that 85% of U.S. adults acknowledged that politically motivated violence is increasing in the U.S.
If you're been around SN for a while, you know that I'm a pretty moderate voice on this stuff. After Saturday, I've crossed over. I now think widespread and enduring civil violence is likely, and I think it's close. Like weeks-to-months close.
A CSIS analysis found that from 2016 to 2024 there were 21 partisan political attacks or plots, compared with only two such incidents in the 25+ years before 2016. That’s roughly a tenfold increase in politically-motivated plots/attacks in a relatively short period. There are more guns in the United States than people, and many people have a violent streak in them. Certainly, the conflict between the central government and Minnesota (and other state governments) is bad and looks likely to get worse. The world saw the killings in Minneapolis of two opponents to Trump’s ICE initiative and is now watching to see which side will back down.
TACO used to be a pattern we could count on, but it seems less the case lately. I think the next couple weeks will be telling.
I've watched friends that I thought were moderates get emboldened by Trump's win and begin sympathizing with white nationalists. Probing one of the self-aware ones during a spout of surprising racism, they conceded they were "maybe" being unjust but said "how do they expect us to react after they treat us like this?" I stopped myself from generalizing because I know bitcoiners are odd ducks in more than one dimension, usually, but tribal vibes and negative, anxious sentiment are high among bitcoiners and bitcoiners are doing relatively well.
I'm numb, for unrelated reasons, but your post inspired me to revisit Dalio and how moderates survive this shit.
How bad / of what nature was the racism being spouted?
I'm not even white, but I can understand if white men feel that they've been pushed into a corner. I have personally witnessed more outright discrimination against white men than any other group. (Not talking about online hate, where I do see a lot of racism against non-whites. I'm talking about personal, offline experiences.)
I am very cognizant of the potential need to escape, and escape quickly. Bitcoin is part of that plan.
I have a guess -- academic hiring stuff and University bureaucracy -- but I'd be curious if you'd share any details. Or even: broad strokes.
Yes - context was academic hiring. But it wasn't some soft institutional stuff like bonus points for being diverse. It was literally an individual person vocalizing out loud for everyone to hear, "I took this guy off the list because he's a white male."
(This is also despite us already having implemented, at the behest of administrators worried about diversity in hiring, a points-based system for hiring that supposedly takes subjectivity out of the mix, and this guy was on the list and qualified based on the points system.)
They said something about how all members of X and Y race have superiority complexes that made them insufferable. On a relative basis, it was pretty mild.
But they went for the broad brush immediately and were seemingly adept at using it. This was also the second time I witnessed them use it. When I instigated reflection, they insisted that they were owed the broad brush, and that was the scary part.
They felt maligned and I couldn't disagree with them. That's the shape of war though, two wrongs making a right, two sides merely "defending" themselves, over and over again.
I'm not, preferring aloofness in all things, but I've thought about it enough to act just-in-time. Hopefully.
If two sides are exclusively defending, there won't be war. So I guess that's the shape of the fairy tale, whereas the reality is shaped by escalation, in the form of aggression (of any kind.)
This is the heart of it, I think.
There's a right-wing Substack I subscribe to because I hate the fucker, hate him, I hate-read his newsletter, and yet in the course of reading it I am instructed by the framing, I see how he has assembled pieces {D,E,F} and combined them with pieces {P,Q,R} to make a certain kind of story. And the story holds together! It is, when one adopts the frame, and the evidence he has assembled, and follows his narrative flow, attending to this and not that, perfectly rational. (I don't read any left-wing Substackers because I'm already familiar with their version of the same.)
It's easy to see how if you have a burning need for X to be the story, that you can walk away confirmed that X is, in fact, the story, for pretty much any X. Pick a fucking position and if you're not a total imbecile you can chart a defensible argument for it, and go on TV or on Twitter, or start your own newsletter, and find your legions, getting more and more right the whole time, more right and more convinced of your rightness.
This isn't to say that everyone is as bad as everyone, or that all arguments are equally true and thus equally worthless. I don't believe that. But man, it's instructive. I have a much better sense of how a person could make an ideological journey, filled with reasonable-seeming logic and plausible facts along the way, and emerge a Nazi at the end of it.
Nobody sees himself turning into the villain.
What's the substack?
I can't bear to say. The thought of giving the fucker readership makes me want to vomit.
Haha, I kinda just want to see for myself. I don't really hate-read or hate-watch anyone, but my media bubble is right-leaning so I tend to see more of the left loons get picked out. I do need to be more aware of the right loons out there.
Do you have a location picked out? Is it another country, or just another area? I'm very curious if there's anything you're willing to share.
Haha, I said I'm cognizant, not that I'm ready.
Where to flee to kinda depends on what's happening. If it's US domestic civil war, I'd probably flee to Taiwan, where I have family. If it's some US-China thing, they'll probably flee to me
I wish @davidw would come back and tell us how Uruguay is going, if he's still there.
I think TACO will hold. I see Trump backing down in Minneapolis. I hope he does.
Pretty much already over: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/did-white-house-just-blink-border-patrol-boss-demoted-minneapolis-mayor-says-feds-are
But I think the real story is a little different than being presented though. Zoom out:
That was a "negotiation". Waltz played his hand and got what he wanted. Expect this: (a) Waltz won't be prosecuted, (b) In a week or so, ICE will quietly begin deportations in MN again and there won't be anymore protest about it.
Interesting. I didn't have in mind any backroom politics when I made my prediction, but it's plausible.
My reasoning was that Trump is all about optics. He doesn't mind the optics of rowdy protests, since I think that on net it hurts the protesters more than him. But it's gotten to the point where he can't control the optics, and now American citizens have been killed. He doesn't want that on his doorstep, nor should anyone.
I think thats true at the same time. I think thats where Waltz forced Trump to the table... it was a way for Trump to reel in the chaos before it all started to backfire on him politically.
cut off all federal funding to MN
I disagree with this, or, currently I do at least. The scenes of chaos and violence only help the far-left, and as such I place a lot of the blame on them for the recent deaths. I'm not by any means justifying the deaths, but the far-left's rhetoric of fear and 'everyone is a fascist' is at an all-time high and those that succumb to it are putting their bodies on the line and getting hurt. This shouldn't come as a surprise after the literal calls to put "bodies on the line" from Dem officials recently. It's very sad, and worrying, and I don't know where it ends.
-Tom
Yeah, at the end of the day people prioritize order over chaos. I too think the public was turning, not because they are suddenly ideologically siding with the protesters, simply because they want the bad news to stop.
and this is why illegal immigration will continue
People voted for Trump to stop illegal immigration but deportations are so unseemly
the silver lining is we can focus on fraud and embezzlement in MN
Remember when the blackest person in MN used to be Prince?
I'm concerned that it already has held and this is the milder version.
From a scale standpoint, we still aren't anywhere close to what mass deportation actually requires, in terms of use of force.
Good point, and terrible to imagine. If it's already this gestapo-like, imagine the escalation of it.
I hope so too.
Its here and has been off and on for a while. Not cheering it on. On the contrary I have been talking about a civil national divorce for years. Seems neither side will leave the other alone. The reasons differ but it's not one sided. Seems unavoidable now.
I suppose that's true, it's just a question of where you calibrate yourself, what you assume the control group and the "appropriate" ambient level of violence to be.
For instance, you could start w/ Trump assassination attempt and then play it forward steadily (MN congresspeople; Charlie Kirk; these protestors); and I suppose you could start before that, and that it would get even fuller depending on what you chose to include.
Like Dalio said in the article, it's not clear, in the moment, when things start and when they end. Which is obvious in retrospect, but I somehow had never considered it before.
Indeed.
Maybe this will finally push some blue states into seeking independence.
The problem is... that will likely trigger more violence.
Almost certainly. It also removes the political checks on this kind of abuse in the places that remain.
I suspect you're right and hope you're wrong. My thinking has gone in the same direction (so I guess I hope I'm wrong, too).
Crossing fingers that we're both wrong.
What if Dalio and other like Rogers have understood bitcoin and are just preserving their privacy?
China won the trade war.
Beat the wests capitalists at their own game.
The wests citizens had become too entitled, demanding 'rights' without offering duty to the nation....embracing feminism and neoliberalism where they demanded things for themselves forgetting that citizens are ultimately largely reliant upon the nation for wealth and security.
USA cannot now fight a war of any scale and duration without the refined rare earths that China controls.
The rise and fall of western civilisation...it's been a great story, perhaps coming to an end.
Not just yet. Pretty much everything the US is doing right now is to reduce that risk, reduce the leverage that China have, and deter or delay them from taking action in Taiwan. It will take time to bring large scale chip manufacturing back to the US, but it is happening. The same with rare earth minerals (see: Greenland). There is some time to achieve these things, it's not like the US is just giving up.
-Tom
Agreed USA is responding - but only because it is forced to.
Reshoring chip production because it is all but inevitable China will retake Taiwan.
The problem with rare earths is not accessing the raw materials, but refining them.
Greenland is zero help with that.
It will take a decade, at least, to restore reliable refined rare earths supply independent of China and that will cost huge sums of money. In the meantime the US military industrial combine is on its knees begging to China for continued supply. China is maintaining its ban on any rare earth exports that could reach US military suppliers.
USA is reacting defensively to a China that has already captured and dominated most global supply chains. That is no easy thing to reverse. It is nigh impossible.
Certainly the outcome is not yet determined, but it is far from certain USA will retain global hegemony. Many of Trumps actions indicate retreat into regional hegemony while leaving the rest of the world to defend itself, or align with China. Few countries can afford to cease trade with China because China offers the best trading option for most manufactured goods and commodities because it processes commodities into manufactured goods more efficiently than any other nation.
No vivo en Estados Unidos pero no estoy de acuerdo con esa política de atropello migratorio más en un continente que se conquistó por emigrantes, una cosa es atrapar delincuentes y otra pisotear a quien trabaja legalmente,
I share your concern, and I think it's entirely possible that at some point the country will heat up, given everything that's happening. The fact that “there are more people than guns”. is quite worrying.
*more guns than people
Wow, a small mistake, ha ha ha. 😅🤣Thanks for your help! “More weapons than people.”
Dalio makes it clear the US is a tinderbox. Weeks to months away from serious civil unrest
Hard to disagree. Dalio’s framework fits this moment uncomfortably well and the speed at which things are escalating is what’s really alarming.
The Minnesota flashpoint is significant not because it’s unprecedented but because it could normalize direct confrontation between state and federal authority in the eyes of millions. That kind of precedent rarely gets walked back voluntarily.
This isn’t just about who’s in charge politically. It’s about whether the mechanisms for resolving disputes peacefully are still seen as legitimate by enough of the population. When that legitimacy is gone violence turns from being unthinkable to being rationalized and eventually expected. Once expectation sets in escalation becomes hard to arrest without a clear decisive event that shifts the narrative.
Make love ❤ don't fight!!
Maybe a good time to own gold.
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