Economically and socially, Saudi Arabia is a mess. And it's not going to get better in the long run, even if oil prices rebound and they feel some degree of a r

Economically and socially, Saudi Arabia is a mess. And it's not going to get better in the long run, even if oil prices rebound and they feel some degree of a respite. Technology is changing, and oil isn't going to be sufficient for the Saudis to keep the lid on things domestically. When most countries industrialize, they go through significant social and economic changes. Saudi Arabia got to skip a lot of those changes, and the end result is that they're ill-prepared for when their reserves have dried up. Their non-oil sectors are practically non-existent, with very little non-petro industry in the country at all. They've got huge social stratification problems, and they have to deal with religious opposition to modernization and diversification (for fear of westernization). They've spent the 37 years since the Grand Mosque seizure radically empowering the extreme religious conservatives and bankrolling Wahhabi expansion overseas. It helped them avoid additional internal conflict by exporting their problem children, but when the money dries up, the devil's bargain is going to come to an end with it. The reforms the Saudis need to make are too great, and they'd disrupt too many aspects of their economy at once. And that's before you include the religious opposition into the mix. Had they started years ago, and attempted to curtail some of the religious conservative's power early on, they might have been able to ride things out. As it is now, it's going to be a very bloody crash in every sense of the word.