Weekly Non-Fiction Reading List 3.18.24
This week, I read four fantastic books. We have a book about comparing Finland to the U.S., and it’s really eye-opening. We also have a book about the dangers of MLMs, the new Cal Newport book, and a book about one of the most overhyped billionaires in existence. Enjoy!
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The Fund: Ray Dalio, Bridgewater Associates, and the Unraveling of a Wall Street Legend by Rob Copeland
I wanted to read this book because Ray Dalio is spoken of as a god in so many business books and books about making good decisions. His “principles” are held up as this holy grail of how to run a company. The man is a billionaire who runs a hedge fund, and I just knew there was no way that this guy is the all-around great fellow these books paint him as. And thanks to the great journalism of Rob Copeland, this book paints the real picture of who Dalio is.
This book doesn’t have insane hard-hitting scandals that you’d expect from a book like this. There are some stories of covered-up sexual harassment, which is pretty bad. But the primary takeaway from this book is that Ray Dalio is exactly what you’d expect a billionaire hedge fund manager to be: a complete and utter a-hole who is drunk off his own kool-aid.
The primary thing Dalio is known for is his “principles”, and basically it’s a way to run a company and how to make great decisions. There are a ton of them, but most of all, his principles are designed to make it so everyone’s voice is heard and you promote the idea of disagreement so you can find better answers.
When you read this book, you learn that this is complete BS. Dalio runs his company like a dictator, and it’s actually laughable. He’s created such an environment of fear that nobody dares disagree with him because if they do, they’ll be fired pretty quick. The man believes he’s never wrong, and it’s literally insane the lengths he goes to by manipulating data to make it seem as though he’s this godly figure within his company.
For example, he has a social credit system within his company where everyone grades each other (yes. it’s literally like the Black Mirror episode), and Dalio is the baseline for the grading system. When first creating the system, someone had a better grade than him on some dumb, subjective metric, and he made the programmers change it so nobody can ever score higher than him.
This book is bonkers, and I’m completely unsurprised that there’s still no ethical billionaires. You also find out that he’s not great at his job of picking stocks, either. But at the end of the day, I really don’t care. All of his employees are making salaries in the upper hundreds of thousands and many are getting paid millions of dollars. I have very little sympathy because I’d almost guarantee most of them are bad people too who have lived extremely privileged lives. I wish there were more books about the mistreatment of people who are living paycheck to paycheck that got as much attention as this book has.
But should you read it? Absolutely. It’ll help dispel this ridiculous idea that the richest people are also the smartest people. It’ll also have you side-eyeing business books and decision-making books that reference this pompous d-bag on a regular basis.
Selling the Dream: The Billion-Dollar Industry Bankrupting Americans by Jane Marie
This book dives into the terrible world of MLMs. If you’re unfamiliar with multi-level marketing scams like Avon, LuLeRoe, Mary Kay and all of the others, definitely read this book. If you’re super familiar with MLMs (like I am) and watch documentaries and YouTube videos on the topic, you may not learn much from this book. I picked it up in hopes that it was going to dig into some of the psychology behind why people get suckered into this, but it’s extremely minimal.
Although I know a ton about MLMs and how terrible they are, I did learn a bit of history about why they’re so hard to stop and the major cases that decided the future of MLMs. So, it may be worth the read even if you know a bit about MLMs. Overall, I’m just glad more people are spreading the word about these scams.
Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout by Cal Newport
Like many others, I’m a massive fan of Cal Newport. I read all of his books, even if I think he goes a bit overboard with some of his “deep work” philosophy. He still has a lot of great ideas and thoughts about doing good work. With that said, this book is extremely niche and may not appeal to a wide range of readers like some of his other books. This book is specifically for an about knowledge workers like writers, philosophers, and people who have the privilege of getting paid to think.
As per usual, Cal makes extremely strong arguments. This book is all about slowing down and creating the space necessary to think through projects to perform our best work. He shares a lot of stories from famous knowledge workers and creates some principles so we can do better work.
Even if you’re not a full-time knowledge worker, you can probably benefit from this book. I’m only a part-time knowledge worker with my writing, and I gained some value from this book. But for the majority of the population, I could imagine them just getting annoyed by this book. Newport is a pretty progressive thinker, but the people this book appeals to is mainly those of us who are privileged enough to get paid for writing, thinking, teaching, and other forms of knowledge work.
A lot of academics read my book reviews, so for most of you, this is probably a good read. But if you’re working a normal office job with little to no control over your day-to-day tasks, you can probably skip this one. Well, you can give a copy to your boss and hope they change how things are done or potentially get fired.
The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life by Anu Partanen
This book was so good that it was depressing. For some reason, although America is one of the wealthiest nations on the planet, we lag so far behind other developed countries in a variety of categories. If you have yet to learn that or don’t believe it, then you need to read this book. Anu is from Finland, and after immigrating to America, she quickly realized good she had it in Finland. She does a fantastic job explaining how Finland excels in healthcare, education, reducing poverty, worker’s rights, and so much more.
And get this, they’re even doing capitalism a lot better than us.
Something that’s interesting is that I learned about this book from a finance influencer. She said she loved this book so much that she booked a trip to Finland with her husband soon after. I assumed it was one of those books about a philosophy of life, and while it discusses “the Nordic theory of love”, it’s all about how the society is run. And I’m sure that clashes with a well-paid finance influencer's way of life.
Anywho, it’s really a bummer learning about how good other countries have it while knowing we could easily do the same. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. The older I get, the more I lose faith in our government and democracy. Even when the citizens agree on something in America, capitalism has gone so far off the rails that politicians can be bought and not work for the best interest of the people.
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