The 5 Phases of Countries & Companies

Marvin Liao
1 min readMar 3, 2021

This came from Ray Dalio. (#Hattip to Chamath for surfacing this.)

  1. Poor Countries Acting Poor
  2. A Poor Country Who Becomes Rich but Acting Poor
  3. Rich Country Acting Rich
  4. A Rich Country that has become poor but does not realize it & still acting rich
  5. A Rich Country Becomes Poor again

Using this matrix, you can easily slot countries into each phase. So many things to mention here. Hunger/ dissatisfaction versus complacency. Saving versus spending. Frugal versus extravagance. Humility versus arrogance (ahem, USA & UK).

This is also incredibly relevant to people & our lives. Also quite relevant to companies as well. It’s the “Rags to Riches to Rags” cycle. Assuming you have some level of self awareness and honesty, you can use this to plot where you are in your life stage and mentality. The key is build good habits and keep the right attitude to prevent complacency and arrogance.

And hopefully use it to slow down any fall coming.

As my Ukrainian friends say, “The best wolf is always a little bit hungry.”

Listen to this Newsletter: https://listencat.com/the-hard-fork-by-marvin-liao-podcast/

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Marvin Liao

Ever curious: Tsundoku, Reader, Aspiring Shokunin, World traveller, Investor & Tech/Media exec interested in almost everything! www.marvinliao.com