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Comment by tock | Hacker News Reader

It's kinda weird how Dalio has been predicting a fall for a while now.

He's described as a "permabear" on r/StockMarket and r/wallstreetbets. Common refrain is he could be right in principle, but getting the timing wrong can be the same as being wrong, for all practical purposes.

The timing matters if you want to make money off it. I'm just talking about how he was saying the US empire will fall a few years ago. Not the stock market.

I think it can also apply to how much credit we should give him if he ends up being right. If his predictions come true within the next decade, he'll be considered a prophet; if in the next half century, then not so much.

I don't have anything to go by for this, but I do wonder if there were any people who predicted the downfall of the Roman empire 200, 100, 50, etc years before it actually collapsed. I suspect all of them would have somehow based this on its decadence and excesses, but I also suspect none would have had a firm grasp on how it would play out.

I am similarly interested with such questions wrt to the US today.

The Roman Empire died in 1453 because the Ottoman Turks had gunpowder cannons. I am not anybody predicted that considering the Arabs could have likely finished off the Roman Empire immediately after finishing off the crusader states. The Mongols absolutely could have finished off the Roman Empire but just weren’t interested after bouncing off Palestine. Before that the early Muslims could have finished off the Roman Empire has Khalid Ibn Al Walid not been sacked by his cousin.

With so many near death experiences actually death was challenging to guess at.

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