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I’ve been following this project recently. Not entirely surprised that someone wants to jump on the hype and possibly scam some profit from it. Honestly the go

by LASR 4y ago

I’ve been following this project recently. Not entirely surprised that someone wants to jump on the hype and possibly scam some profit from it. Honestly the goals for the project seems lofty and in some ways seems like a scam itself. The engineering feasibility and the economics behind the fancy 3d renderings is simply not there.

stephen_g 4y ago
Yeah, I really don't get what they get spending so much on advertising it. Apart from the idea being ridiculously impractical, it's just not a very good idea even if it was achievable to build it... So is this all just image massaging? To try and associate Saudi Arabia with things other than the executions, human rights abuses, etc.? I did see some interesting analysis that the massive spending on advertising and advertorials by oil and gas companies in papers like the New York Times did seem to have an effect on softening how the papers covered climate change and the impacts of fossil fuels... Maybe this is the same idea?
- bobthepanda 4y ago
  Saudi Arabia has a massive pot of money, but has no idea what to do with it. The last attempt to deploy it resulted in tech unicorns that at best don’t make much profit, and at worst were an absolute bust like WeWork. (Saudi Arabia was $45B of the initial $100B Softbank Vision Fund.)
- input_sh 4y ago
  > So is this all just image massaging? To try and associate Saudi Arabia with things other than the executions, human rights abuses, etc.? Think of it as a Truman show for westerners, same as Dubai and Doha. All three want a city like that so that they appear progressive, technologically advanced, and a good place to move to with high salaries and little to no taxes (Sharia has a designated exception for non-Muslims[0] that comes in handy). As long as they keep that image and keep Europeans and Americans happy, they can do as many human rights abuses as they want, while also allowing westerners to live there completely blind of the abuse that's literally all around them. And because of the war and Europe looking elsewhere for more natural gas and oil, Arabian peninsula is about to get even more unfathomably rich and build even more stupid impractical structures. Qatar in particular, there's a giant natural gas reserve under the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Iran. The only thing that surprises me is why it took so long for Saudi Arabia to build a city like that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi

by LASR 4y ago

stephen_g 4y ago

Yeah, I really don't get what they get spending so much on advertising it. Apart from the idea being ridiculously impractical, it's just not a very good idea even if it was achievable to build it... So is this all just image massaging? To try and associate Saudi Arabia with things other than the executions, human rights abuses, etc.? I did see some interesting analysis that the massive spending on advertising and advertorials by oil and gas companies in papers like the New York Times did seem to have an effect on softening how the papers covered climate change and the impacts of fossil fuels... Maybe this is the same idea?

bobthepanda 4y ago
Saudi Arabia has a massive pot of money, but has no idea what to do with it. The last attempt to deploy it resulted in tech unicorns that at best don’t make much profit, and at worst were an absolute bust like WeWork. (Saudi Arabia was $45B of the initial $100B Softbank Vision Fund.)
input_sh 4y ago
> So is this all just image massaging? To try and associate Saudi Arabia with things other than the executions, human rights abuses, etc.? Think of it as a Truman show for westerners, same as Dubai and Doha. All three want a city like that so that they appear progressive, technologically advanced, and a good place to move to with high salaries and little to no taxes (Sharia has a designated exception for non-Muslims[0] that comes in handy). As long as they keep that image and keep Europeans and Americans happy, they can do as many human rights abuses as they want, while also allowing westerners to live there completely blind of the abuse that's literally all around them. And because of the war and Europe looking elsewhere for more natural gas and oil, Arabian peninsula is about to get even more unfathomably rich and build even more stupid impractical structures. Qatar in particular, there's a giant natural gas reserve under the Persian Gulf between Qatar and Iran. The only thing that surprises me is why it took so long for Saudi Arabia to build a city like that. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhimmi