Futurology

Note - where 'Earth-like' is defined as planets analogous to Earth in terms of mass and equilibrium temperature.

Here's a full version of Mr. Dalio's words, and below is a summary. Also, he's written several books on this topic, more info here.

While tariffs and their market impacts dominate headlines, the deeper, more critical issue is the breakdown of the global monetary, political, and geopolitical order—a rare, once-in-a-lifetime shift driven by unsustainable debt, inequality, and deglobalization.

Key forces at play:

Monetary/Economic Order Collapse: Unsustainable debt imbalances (e.g., U.S. overborrowing, China over-lending) are forcing a restructuring of global trade and capital flows.

Domestic Political Fragmentation: Rising inequality and populism are eroding democracies, paving the way for autocratic leadership.

Geopolitical Power Shifts: The U.S.-led multilateral order is fading, replaced by unilateralism and conflict (trade wars, tech wars).

Climate & Tech Disruptions: Natural disasters and AI will further destabilize economies and international relations.

Why focus on these? Tariffs are symptoms, not causes. History shows such imbalances lead to depressions, wars, and new orders. Policymakers must prepare for radical measures (debt defaults, capital controls) as the old system unravels.

A 2024 article talks about their strategy: they believe in a radical 'rebirth' of the U.S. through a major financial crisis—one that would force a debt default, eliminate the Federal Reserve, and replace the system with a libertarian model centered on cryptocurrency.

These ideas may have sounded like conspiracy theories in the past, but in 2025, they seem more plausible. The current administration thrives on chaos as a distraction, yet its policies increasingly align with this vision of engineered collapse. Is this what’s actually happening?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard lays out the likely steps in how this will happen in this article.

He says Trump will take direct control of the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. This, and his global tariff war, and tax cuts for the rich, will stoke huge levels of inflation in the US. Think of Erdogan's Turkey for comparison.

By this point, the foreigners who finance US government debt by buying Treasury bonds will start to lose confidence in the dollar as a currency.

This crisis will force money printing (quantitative easing) and capital controls, both furthering the currency crisis and perhaps leading to hyperinflation.

I hope there are sunny uplands for the world ahead, and the transition to get to them isn't too long. We were always going to have to endure economic pain as we transitioned to a world where robots/AI can do all work. I suspect that pain is going to start sooner than we expected.

Hyundai employs 75,000 people globally. Approximately half in South Korea, and half in facilities across the U.S., China, India, Turkey, the Czech Republic, Russia, Brazil, and other locations.

It will be interesting to see if these robots supplement that workforce, or replace some of them. Honda says its newest car factory in China needs 30% less staff thanks to AI & automation and its staff of 800 can produce 5 times more cars than the global average for the automotive industry.

Bringing manufacturing jobs home has been in the news lately, but it's not the 1950s or even the 1980s anymore. Today's factories need far less humans. Global car sales were 78,000,000 in 2024 and the global automotive workforce was 2,500,000. However, if the global workforce was as efficient as this Honda factory, it could build those cars with only 20% of that workforce.

If something can be done for 20% of the cost, that is probably the direction of travel. Bear in mind too, factories will get even more automated and efficient than today's 2025 Honda factory.

It's not improbable within a few years we will have 100% robot-staffed factories that need no humans at all. Who'll have the money to buy all the cars they make is another question entirely.

Details of the new Honda factory.