6 ms·

I say this as somebody who lived in one of those Middle Eastern countries for a good period of my life. I'm not a white person and at that time I didn't have a

by apohn 5y ago

I say this as somebody who lived in one of those Middle Eastern countries for a good period of my life. I'm not a white person and at that time I didn't have a US/European passport, so I didn't lead an extra privalaged life there. Here's what you can hear about the USA. 1)Endless suburban sprawl, resulting in massive environmental destruction. Illegal immigrants heavily involved in the construction industry, leading to mass exploitation 2)Structural racism 3)Human rights on a sliding scale, with rich white rapists getting no jail sentences, and poor black people and immigrants going to jail for minor offenses. 4)Rich consumers pushing environmental and human rights issues to poor countries where people are exploited to build your $1000 phone and $250 shoe. 5)Lots of places where if you go and say "I'm an Atheist, Jesus is not God" will likely result in violence against you 6)Corrupt legal system, heavily favoring corporations and rich people 7)Absurdly hot in parts of it, Absurdly cold in other parts of it. >I can't believe anyone would voluntarily go there, seems like hell on earth. Lots of people probably feel that way about the USA based on the news. UAE (Dubai, Abu Dhabi), and other countries in that region, have a lot of issues. I'll be the first to admit it having had second class status there. But I can't help but feel that a lot of Western news outlets love to bash that part of the world because it plays into how a lot of people like to feel like the rest of the world is a shithole.

dogman144 5y ago
Qatar is not Dubai, but when was the last time you heard of 6,500 migrant workers dying building a group of soccer stadiums/olympic village/large public works in the USA? That is to say, that region's rep comes from a bit more than stereotypes or a filtering bubble.
- lowbloodsugar 5y ago
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dogman144 5y ago
    Good way to grossly simplify the Iraqi civil war and ROE! I'd agree with "IIRC the USA invaded Iraq, which set of a decades-long civil war fueled by sectarian violence and incompetent application of various nation building and counter-insurgency strategies." But that's a less clean catchphrase.
    - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
      The US dropped cluster bombs in civilian areas and blew the legs off kids. Sure, have your conversation about rules of engagement. So, what you said. And if this was the first time this had happened, with every previous war being exemplary precision execution, then wow, this would just be a terrible tragedy. But it's not. Its modus operandi. Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc. As I said, "We'll come to you!"
ludamad 5y ago
"a lot of people like to feel like the rest of the world is a shithole." I wouldn't say that's my bias - I like to travel so I like to feel like the rest of the world is welcoming. However, clear problems that are different from what I'm used to do make me uncomfortable
- apohn 5y ago
  >I like to travel so I like to feel like the rest of the world is welcoming. I'm not making any assumptions about you in this post, but just making a comment. I think the challenge here is that "welcoming" is relative to who you are, including your financial status and skin color. There are countries people talk about on HN and Reddit which are super welcoming, everybody is friendly, great for remote work, taking an inexpensive vacation, etc. I once traveled to one of those countries with a white friend. It was comical to see how differently we'd be treated even though we'd be walking next to each other on the road or sitting together at a restaurant. We're clearly friends and hanging out. He'd get his ass kissed and I'd be treated like a non-entity. Our English, human interaction skills, and financial status were pretty much the same. It's not like anybody could tell his passport or mine by looking at us. Again, UAE and other countries in that region have lots of problems. So this isn't negating what you are saying.
  - titanomachy 5y ago
    Thanks for this comment. As a white-ish person who has mostly traveled with other white people, I was totally blind to this and made the same judgement: that these countries are just inherently welcoming to foreigners.
    - midjji 5y ago
      Try dressing like a slob and borderline bum next time you visit the city next to where you live, then do the same dressed in an expensive tailored suit and matching watch(just get some gaudy knockoff on amazon, its not like anyone can actually tell). The difference in how you are treated is just nuts. Its not that these countries are inherently welcoming to foreigners, its that the service sector of pretty much all countries are welcoming to people who are very wealthy. (or rather people who can plausibly fake it)
zaphod12 5y ago
I don't know about number 7 - most of the USA is actually pretty nicely temperate. There are some exceptions like death valley (3000 sq mi) or the chihuahan dessert (about 25000 sq mi in the USA), or some parts of Alaska, but we're talking about a very small area of a 3.7 million sq mi country. If those aren't your thing, I do recommend skipping them. UAE is only 32000 sq mi and it's all very very hot. Otherwise that's all fairly accurate. But Disney world is pretty damn great.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- prewett 5y ago
  Texas is 100+ for three months of the year, and Minneapolis had an average of about 10 degrees this January, with lows in the -10s, I believe. And I think Mississippi in the summer is probably pretty miserable, it's probably as close to 100+ as the humidity will let it. I think most of the American West is about 100 in the summer and cold in the winter, due to not having the ocean to mitigate the temperature.
- zipswitch 5y ago
  The northern tier of states, especially inland, are quite cold and snowy for months out of the year. If you're a local, you're used to it and likely enjoy aspects of it. But for someone who isn't familiar with it, months of regular temperatures below freezing, ice and snow, and frequent drops to well below zero Farenheit, are pretty miserable.
- rocqua 5y ago
  It's not about whether tge statements are representative. It's about whether people believe them. It just so happens the statements are technically true.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jacquesm 5y ago
> Human rights on a sliding scale, with rich white rapists getting no jail sentences, and poor black people and immigrants going to jail for minor offenses. Some things seem to be universal.
Workaccount2 5y ago
I guess the issue for me is that there are places where people greatly exaggerate their claims, and there are places where those seemingly exaggerated claims are legitimate. Given that, I don't think I have ever read anything good about the UAE, either editorial or comments from expats. Maybe from insta influencers who wanted to pad their hollow "luxury life" existance.
- apohn 5y ago
  >Given that, I don't think I have ever read anything good about the UAE There are 10 million people living in the UAE, 90% of which are expats. Lots of them live comfortable lives in the sense that they do what most people do - get jobs, have kids, do their daily routine, meet their friends, and all that regular stuff. They live normal regular lives and find fulfillment in those things. It's no different than anywhere else in the world. If you live in UAE you'll find plenty of positive stories. One thing I always laugh about is that my parents (who live outside of the USA) will text me asking about housing prices in my area, bad weather (that happened in a different state), some protest downtown (that I didn't even hear about), riots from police brutality and if it affects me, etc. But nobody seems to know that my neighborhood had a pot-luck where all the kids were having fun and the parents got a chance to meet each other and get to know the new people in the community. It's no different living outside of UAE and hearing about UAE.
  - fishtacos 5y ago
    How many of those expats are working slave-like conditions, is the greater point that ought to be discussed. (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Iraq, you name it). If 10 percent of the country's population is native, they are surely benefiting from subsidized education, housing, preferential (read: racist) employment, free land, and so on. It's VERY different from most places in the world, except for other sister nations that depend on oil wealth and have the same luxuries in immigrant exploitation.
    - selestify 5y ago
      > How many of those expats are working slave-like conditions Given that all the Indians I know think positively of Dubai, I'm inclined to think that it's very few of them, because surely they'd hear about slave conditions from people who went there before anyone else. If you've ever been to Dubai, you'd know it's full of people from the subcontinent. Why would it be so full of them if a substantial fraction of them are kept as slaves? It just doesn't make sense. It's mostly the Western white crowd, as opposed to non-white immigrant populations, who think these sorts of things about Dubai. edit: example of what I mean: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387801 Dismissing all those people looking for a better life as "slave labor" just doesn't make sense.
throwawaybcwb 5y ago
knownjorbist 5y ago
In the face of all of this, the US remains the most desirable place to emigrate to. The logical conclusion here is that the impression you have from news is not the complete picture. The US is massive and diverse. If you go by the county level, the US contains the highest HDI areas in the world.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  there's a curious fact that i see getting overlooked in every one of these discussion. The US - for all its faults, remains a society capable of deep change, confronting its own crimes and one that is fundamentally built around inclusion. all this is to say that the problems of US society as documented and that one is free to read about them if one chooses. This is not the case in the Arab world, for example. I grew up there and have seen horrors of which there is no documented evidence. You are correct - despite all its flaws, the USA remains a magnet for talent from around the world.
- BeetleB 5y ago
  Eh - Dubai is a lot more diverse than the US. A similar comment could be written about it.
  - knownjorbist 5y ago
    Dubai is not more diverse than the US. The largest disapora of essentially every other nation on Earth reside in the US.
dspillett 5y ago
Also, 8: almost any idiot can own a gun & ammunition, and far too many idiots do.
- IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
  Fortunately, we live in a country where idiots have the same rights as those who think are smarter than them. I, for one, am glad we aren't going back to racist gating of citizenship privileges...behind literacy tests, or economic means
  - dspillett 5y ago
    I wasn't suggesting idiots have different rights to anyone else, or in fact that I myself am not an idiot. I, for one, am glad I live on a continent where mass shootings are a rare occurrence. One-off shootings too, and people accidentally hurting themselves with the things, for that matter.
loljustice 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
financetechbro 5y ago
I find it pretty hilarious that point #7 is even a thing. Coming from (assuming UAE) an area that experiences +100 °F weather for half of the year lol…
pklausler 5y ago
You omitted civil asset forfeiture laws and qualified immunity for police.
pierrebai 5y ago
Does the USA: 1) Arrest you without telling you why? 2) Give you no access to a lawyer? 3) Give you no access to translation? 4) Have a debt system in prison, forcing to pay with money you don't have? 5) Retroactively apply laws? 6) Extend imprisonment indefinitely on made-up charges? 7) Ruled by a monarchy? All the things you list boil down to pointing out the US system is imperfect, not that the system is bad by its very nature and design. UAE cannot be fixed without changing its ruling and legal system. The US can be fixed by improving its existing systems to make them more fair. Also, the reason you point the failing of the US systems is because media is reporting on those failures. Not foreign media, local ones.

by apohn 5y ago

dogman144 5y ago

Qatar is not Dubai, but when was the last time you heard of 6,500 migrant workers dying building a group of soccer stadiums/olympic village/large public works in the USA? That is to say, that region's rep comes from a bit more than stereotypes or a filtering bubble.

lowbloodsugar 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dogman144 5y ago
  Good way to grossly simplify the Iraqi civil war and ROE! I'd agree with "IIRC the USA invaded Iraq, which set of a decades-long civil war fueled by sectarian violence and incompetent application of various nation building and counter-insurgency strategies." But that's a less clean catchphrase.
  - lowbloodsugar 5y ago
    The US dropped cluster bombs in civilian areas and blew the legs off kids. Sure, have your conversation about rules of engagement. So, what you said. And if this was the first time this had happened, with every previous war being exemplary precision execution, then wow, this would just be a terrible tragedy. But it's not. Its modus operandi. Iraqis, Libyans, Syrians, Koreans, Vietnamese, etc. As I said, "We'll come to you!"

ludamad 5y ago

"a lot of people like to feel like the rest of the world is a shithole." I wouldn't say that's my bias - I like to travel so I like to feel like the rest of the world is welcoming. However, clear problems that are different from what I'm used to do make me uncomfortable

apohn 5y ago
>I like to travel so I like to feel like the rest of the world is welcoming. I'm not making any assumptions about you in this post, but just making a comment. I think the challenge here is that "welcoming" is relative to who you are, including your financial status and skin color. There are countries people talk about on HN and Reddit which are super welcoming, everybody is friendly, great for remote work, taking an inexpensive vacation, etc. I once traveled to one of those countries with a white friend. It was comical to see how differently we'd be treated even though we'd be walking next to each other on the road or sitting together at a restaurant. We're clearly friends and hanging out. He'd get his ass kissed and I'd be treated like a non-entity. Our English, human interaction skills, and financial status were pretty much the same. It's not like anybody could tell his passport or mine by looking at us. Again, UAE and other countries in that region have lots of problems. So this isn't negating what you are saying.
- titanomachy 5y ago
  Thanks for this comment. As a white-ish person who has mostly traveled with other white people, I was totally blind to this and made the same judgement: that these countries are just inherently welcoming to foreigners.
  - midjji 5y ago
    Try dressing like a slob and borderline bum next time you visit the city next to where you live, then do the same dressed in an expensive tailored suit and matching watch(just get some gaudy knockoff on amazon, its not like anyone can actually tell). The difference in how you are treated is just nuts. Its not that these countries are inherently welcoming to foreigners, its that the service sector of pretty much all countries are welcoming to people who are very wealthy. (or rather people who can plausibly fake it)

zaphod12 5y ago

I don't know about number 7 - most of the USA is actually pretty nicely temperate. There are some exceptions like death valley (3000 sq mi) or the chihuahan dessert (about 25000 sq mi in the USA), or some parts of Alaska, but we're talking about a very small area of a 3.7 million sq mi country. If those aren't your thing, I do recommend skipping them. UAE is only 32000 sq mi and it's all very very hot. Otherwise that's all fairly accurate. But Disney world is pretty damn great.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
prewett 5y ago
Texas is 100+ for three months of the year, and Minneapolis had an average of about 10 degrees this January, with lows in the -10s, I believe. And I think Mississippi in the summer is probably pretty miserable, it's probably as close to 100+ as the humidity will let it. I think most of the American West is about 100 in the summer and cold in the winter, due to not having the ocean to mitigate the temperature.
zipswitch 5y ago
The northern tier of states, especially inland, are quite cold and snowy for months out of the year. If you're a local, you're used to it and likely enjoy aspects of it. But for someone who isn't familiar with it, months of regular temperatures below freezing, ice and snow, and frequent drops to well below zero Farenheit, are pretty miserable.
rocqua 5y ago
It's not about whether tge statements are representative. It's about whether people believe them. It just so happens the statements are technically true.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jacquesm 5y ago

> Human rights on a sliding scale, with rich white rapists getting no jail sentences, and poor black people and immigrants going to jail for minor offenses. Some things seem to be universal.

Workaccount2 5y ago

I guess the issue for me is that there are places where people greatly exaggerate their claims, and there are places where those seemingly exaggerated claims are legitimate. Given that, I don't think I have ever read anything good about the UAE, either editorial or comments from expats. Maybe from insta influencers who wanted to pad their hollow "luxury life" existance.

apohn 5y ago
>Given that, I don't think I have ever read anything good about the UAE There are 10 million people living in the UAE, 90% of which are expats. Lots of them live comfortable lives in the sense that they do what most people do - get jobs, have kids, do their daily routine, meet their friends, and all that regular stuff. They live normal regular lives and find fulfillment in those things. It's no different than anywhere else in the world. If you live in UAE you'll find plenty of positive stories. One thing I always laugh about is that my parents (who live outside of the USA) will text me asking about housing prices in my area, bad weather (that happened in a different state), some protest downtown (that I didn't even hear about), riots from police brutality and if it affects me, etc. But nobody seems to know that my neighborhood had a pot-luck where all the kids were having fun and the parents got a chance to meet each other and get to know the new people in the community. It's no different living outside of UAE and hearing about UAE.
- fishtacos 5y ago
  How many of those expats are working slave-like conditions, is the greater point that ought to be discussed. (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Philippines, Iraq, you name it). If 10 percent of the country's population is native, they are surely benefiting from subsidized education, housing, preferential (read: racist) employment, free land, and so on. It's VERY different from most places in the world, except for other sister nations that depend on oil wealth and have the same luxuries in immigrant exploitation.
  - selestify 5y ago
    > How many of those expats are working slave-like conditions Given that all the Indians I know think positively of Dubai, I'm inclined to think that it's very few of them, because surely they'd hear about slave conditions from people who went there before anyone else. If you've ever been to Dubai, you'd know it's full of people from the subcontinent. Why would it be so full of them if a substantial fraction of them are kept as slaves? It just doesn't make sense. It's mostly the Western white crowd, as opposed to non-white immigrant populations, who think these sorts of things about Dubai. edit: example of what I mean: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387801 Dismissing all those people looking for a better life as "slave labor" just doesn't make sense.

throwawaybcwb 5y ago

knownjorbist 5y ago

In the face of all of this, the US remains the most desirable place to emigrate to. The logical conclusion here is that the impression you have from news is not the complete picture. The US is massive and diverse. If you go by the county level, the US contains the highest HDI areas in the world.

eldaisfish 5y ago
there's a curious fact that i see getting overlooked in every one of these discussion. The US - for all its faults, remains a society capable of deep change, confronting its own crimes and one that is fundamentally built around inclusion. all this is to say that the problems of US society as documented and that one is free to read about them if one chooses. This is not the case in the Arab world, for example. I grew up there and have seen horrors of which there is no documented evidence. You are correct - despite all its flaws, the USA remains a magnet for talent from around the world.
BeetleB 5y ago
Eh - Dubai is a lot more diverse than the US. A similar comment could be written about it.
- knownjorbist 5y ago
  Dubai is not more diverse than the US. The largest disapora of essentially every other nation on Earth reside in the US.

dspillett 5y ago

Also, 8: almost any idiot can own a gun & ammunition, and far too many idiots do.

IG_Semmelweiss 5y ago
Fortunately, we live in a country where idiots have the same rights as those who think are smarter than them. I, for one, am glad we aren't going back to racist gating of citizenship privileges...behind literacy tests, or economic means
- dspillett 5y ago
  I wasn't suggesting idiots have different rights to anyone else, or in fact that I myself am not an idiot. I, for one, am glad I live on a continent where mass shootings are a rare occurrence. One-off shootings too, and people accidentally hurting themselves with the things, for that matter.

loljustice 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

financetechbro 5y ago

I find it pretty hilarious that point #7 is even a thing. Coming from (assuming UAE) an area that experiences +100 °F weather for half of the year lol…

pklausler 5y ago

You omitted civil asset forfeiture laws and qualified immunity for police.

pierrebai 5y ago

Does the USA: 1) Arrest you without telling you why? 2) Give you no access to a lawyer? 3) Give you no access to translation? 4) Have a debt system in prison, forcing to pay with money you don't have? 5) Retroactively apply laws? 6) Extend imprisonment indefinitely on made-up charges? 7) Ruled by a monarchy? All the things you list boil down to pointing out the US system is imperfect, not that the system is bad by its very nature and design. UAE cannot be fixed without changing its ruling and legal system. The US can be fixed by improving its existing systems to make them more fair. Also, the reason you point the failing of the US systems is because media is reporting on those failures. Not foreign media, local ones.