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Dubai: Where Hope And Also Stupid People Go To Die
Nartwak
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
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Jesus. I'm going to have nightmares. It sounds like a fucking cyberpunk novel.
That it does. Dubai is amazing at PR.
I have a tough time feeling bad for expats there though. In fact, I'm feeling pretty smug about it because I've always thought that it just wasn't a sustainable thing. It really doesn't surprise me that a lot of these things are happening.
Calling the workers that shaped the entire city they are enjoying "unsightly" made me quite angry, but was also unsurprising.
I do however, feel for the workers in those conditions. We have shitty jobs here, but we really have no fucking idea how bad it can get.
The thing about the water really bothers me. 3 times the use of water of any other human, just standing still, not to mention the complete ignorance of their surrounding water quality degradation. Unbelievable.
There's no way they can sustain a society like that. They're either going to have to reform, or they're going to collapse big-time.
I'm usually not a dick about these sorts of things but it seems to me that you don't move to a foreign country, especially one so damn foreign, without understanding what you're getting into. Really understanding. Her story sucks because I guess her husband had a tumor which caused him to mismanage their finances while she was partying in "Adult Disneyland" and now all her servants are gone and she's stuck living in her Range Rover
Ha, guess which article I came on here to make a thread about, if there wasn't one already?
I've been mystified for the past year or so at the media's apparent love affair with Dubai... glad to see some of them, at least, coming around to the truth.
I am, however, unsure yet how to feel about the working poor trapped in Dubai. A big part of me wants to feel sorry for them. On the other hand, I feel no sympathy for all the rich expats stuck there. Is that... biased?
The poor people came because there was no better alternative in the home countries and they were given the streets of gold song and dance.
Am I the only one who wasn't surprised? I'd always assumed this is like it. Sustainability aside (as already stated, I didn't think it was fully), it's an absolute fucking monarchy. People are freaking out, pulling out their hair at the thought that "Socialism has come to America!" and it's only a matter of time before uniforms from a government directorate start abducting people at night and impounding our cars for failing to meet new emission standards, but an absolute monarchy? Oh, no, they're okay! Absolute power is fine so long as its hereditary! Give me a break....it's not just the UAE, but the clever American and European PR firms working for Jordan and Saudi Arabia that have managed to convince at least some Americans that they're basically just the Windsors, but in a hotter climate.
And of course they're going to protect their own, if anyone at all, that's the point of being another country. It's not, as everyone seemed to assume, Disneyland for rich Americans! It's probably isn't even Disneyland for rich subjects of the UAE!
The imported workers, of course, are no surprise--monarchy aside, Dubai is a modern marvel in development. Cities don't just appear this quick without ringing blood out of them. We have our wage slaves to manufacture shoes and the like--imagine if we needed to erect entire cities, from scratch, out the deserts in the southwest--and people could get away with it. I'm sure part of the issue is the development of such a lavish ruling class in such a small state (both in terms of demographics but also bureaucratically). As has been discussed in this thread, we can barely sustain our own ruling class, as the world's economic and military superpower. With that article, I kind of see Dubai as a super-accelerated form of the class-stratification we have here. As Duffel pointed out, imported labor can effectively be slavery here in the US--now imagine that with even fewer protections and oversight. The columnist's POV was understandable--he's actually one of the small population Dubai is intended for. And he's right, should Dubai collapse, it's only going to get worse. Well, at least no one is going to make the claim that the UAE is a Galt state.
Seriously, Dubai is like an 80s Chuck Norris movie, before he goes in with guns blazing on a one man mission of justice to liberate the oppressed and abused (a jeep smashing through a barbed wire enclosure surrounding a prison camp is also mandatory). The only difference would be it's set in the desert instead of a fictional east-asian jungle.
The crucial difference is probably owed to the fact that, in the 1980s, that region was a major ally in the Arab Cold War. East Asia is always an acceptable target for Chuck Norris, those rascally pinkos!
Hmm... why does this sound familiar?
Abuses are justified because the slaves can leave whenever they want. If their employers prevent them from leaving whenever they want, then they should protest their employers, by leaving.
Uh... yeah.
The only thing missing is, "Obviously, no employer would ever cheat his employee, because if he did, then the market would refuse to do business with them!"
So fuck 'em. Dumb bitch can go be someones maid.
o_O
You're an idiot.
All the while ignoring the underlying problems. The pursuit of the effortless Mary Suetopia, the belief that you're inherently superior and more deserving than the weak minded proletariat who make your life style possible, the lack of infrastructure and oversight, asymmetric bargaining and information, the inability to regulate or police abuse, and the fact that people will act completely irrational when it comes to placing short term pleasure over long term sustainability.
Also, racism.
The good news is that you get disappointed now rather than investing even more and have it all nationalized in 20 years if it actually worked itself out.
Had The first couple stayed in britain (as opposed to emigrating to fantasy land), they would have almost assuredly been able to aquire social and financial supports from the goverment when her husband's health deteriorated.
But that is not the case and now the wife finds herself on the ugly side of dubai which most of the expats ignore because it makes them feel bad.
I'm not sure how I'm a dumb bitch. I'm from Michigan. That place is rotting. China, the rest of the world, there are opportunities here. Sometimes things don't turn out for the best, and sometimes unforeseen events can knock you down, but these possibilities don't make their victims idiots when they strike.
You honestly don't see the difference between moving to China for work, and moving to a place that claims to be a Disneyland where everyone lives like kings in the middle of a goddamn desert, that sprouted up from nothing in a single generation?
When you moved to China, were you under the impression that you would stay at the classiest hotels and have your own maids and servants to wait on you hand and foot all the time? Or were your expectations a tad more realistic?
If that were the case, then why withhold their passports?
See, the difference between going to Dubai and going to china, is that People who travel to china aren't going there so that they can party on a regular basis, live without taxation, and have two or three servants.
And to be clear: When I talk about my comtempt for the expats, I'm not talking about the poor bastards who get suckered into doing construction or service work.
Just oput of curiosity though Loren, what did you go to china to do for labour?
Now you're just copy-pasting from Pat Buchanan's blog.
Never before have I been filled with so much rage and disgust.
Yes. But one of these groups were living in Canada, with lots of social welfare and universal health care and what not.
And the other group was living in a third world nation.
The first group went to Dubai out of greed and selfishness. They were already living comfortably, but they wanted to live like CEO fatcats and party every night. The second group went there out of desperation. They just wanted to support their families. The first group was educated and should have known the idea of "too good to be true." The second group is unlikely to have received any real education, and had been sold on people in other nations living far more comfortably than they were (not hard when you're raised in a shithole), and just wanted to get a taste of what the first group already had. The first group wanted servants to lord over, without ever worrying about how their servants might feel about the conditions. The second group was simply looking for work.
Key difference.
I was not wholly under that impression. But that's pretty much what's happening now. I have a cleaning lady, and I eat at 5-star hotels on a semi-regular basis. If I wanted to drop a little more coin, I could live a lot more opulently.
I don't do much. Opportunity just gets shoveled at you here if you smile a lot and learn the language. I used to work as an English teacher. Now I do... other stuff. I'll be going back to America in the fall to finish a bachelor's so I can make way the fuck more money than I already am.
He must be a dangerous man.
The problem with that 'dumb bitch' is the same thing wrong with just about every other foreigner who has found themself in a bad situation there. They were a little naive, and Dubai puts a lot of effort into covering up everything that's wrong with it. When the company her husband worked for sent him there, do you think they made a point of mentioning that he could end up in debtor's prison, unable to depart the country? You read what most of the Emiratis were saying. How much effort do you think their government has put into making it look convincing that Dubai is a place you want to be? It's smoke and mirrors that a lot of people have fallen for, so that makes it all right to say, 'fuck 'em?'
So you also think all the indians, chinese, filipinos, who 'abandoned their country of origin' to go work there are also perfectly deserving of the position they're in?
Gifted people don't "Go Galt" because:
1. At the end of the day even with taxes that I feel are too high, they *still* make ridiculously large sums of money and keep most of what they earn; the "sweat of their brow" and our Bioshock antagonist would put it, and live better than most kings throughout history.
2. Another reason why is very rich people really do not pay much in taxes. There are so many loopholes, deductions, and overvalued charitable donations that a skilled tax accountant can find that many rich people have tax credits.
Also why raising taxes on the rich doesn't really do much of anything, except feed class warfare.
3. Also, some rich people simply become "limo libs" and, ironically, use class warfare against the rich....to secure their leadership positions and wealth. Think the Kennedy's or one of the God only knows how many Obama appointees that "forgot" to pay their taxes in full and on time.
See #2 how they get away with it.
4. Finally, people can move. If you get sick of the looter/moocher run states like the nanny states of Western Europe, the rust belt in detroit or the crushing taxes in California or the buisness hostility of Mass. or NYC, you can always move to a state/country with lower taxes and a more friendly buisness environment, like Texas, Australia, ect. and many do.
And that right there is the irony of socialism; it creates the sort of society it wishes to avoid. By making taxes so high, only the very rich can survive to pay, if they pay taxes at all, for the very poor (or have the very poor become de facto or actual serfs) and the middle class gets crushed by taxes they can't avoid
Margaret Thatcher