6 ms·

The dark side of Dubai

103 points by gnosis 17y ago

yangyang 17y ago
This is from April, btw.
- TrevorBramble 17y ago
  As someone who read it in April, I'm glad it's still being shared.
  - jpcx01 17y ago
    Agreed, but I'd like to see it brought up to date with the current financial crises. I wonder if things are better or worse now that all projects are brought to a hold, these real estate companies are going bankrupt. Will they allow these immigrants to return to their homes, or continue to enforce the debts of passage?
lionhearted 17y ago
I've spent a bit of time in Dubai. It's not quite what the author makes it out to be. I've heard about the abuses - there are some and it's horrible - but it's not indicative of the way most people are running their businesses in Dubai. A mentor of mine from England headed up a project management firm there. The workers under him made 20-40 times what they could make back home in South Asia, in places where the malnourishment/literally-starving-to-death rate is sometimes 30%. An acquaintance of mine who worked in Dubai had a Chinese girlfriend who was a stewardess on Emirates Airlines. Emirates is pretty incredible in that they pay the same amounts to their staff regardless of country of origin - almost all airlines and cruiselines pay much less to people from China, the Philippines, etc, than they would to someone from France or Australia. Emirates pays everyone the same. The acquaintence's Chinese girlfriend bought one house every couple months back in her home province in China on her wages. Her family was becoming incredibly wealthy. A company taking someone's passport and changing their contract is really horrible fraud, a horrific crime. But that's an indictment of the whole society - this kind of nonsense happens in the West too. Take South Korea and the United States - a common story is a girl gets promised high paid waitressing/hostessing job, gets sold into slavery. This is a terrible thing, and should be stopped - but does that mean that United States is running on slave labor? No. A few bad people is not an indictment of an entire society. For a lot of very poor people, Dubai helped pull their families out of poverty. The did some amazing things there. Those things won't be mentioned in a piece like this. People who would be living on subsistence farming in China build houses and manage property after working in Dubai. People from Sri Lanka, India, and Eastern Europe can support their whole families and save money after working there for a couple years, in places where there is no opportunity and everyone is literally starving to death. The author doesn't care about the good. The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story. There's some bad stuff there? Oh yeah, absolutely. There's bad stuff in the USA too. And England. And everywhere. There's also a hell of a lot of good that's happening there, that wasn't mentioned.
- brown9-2 17y ago
  The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story. I'm not sure how you can make this claim. Do you have knowledge of the chronology of the author's events as to when she wrote the article and when she performed the numerous interviews - with both sides - in the article? The author doesn't care about the good. I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud. That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".
  - lionhearted 17y ago
    > I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud. I don't mean the big buildings - I mean the author doesn't mention all the good that happened for a lot of workers that came to Dubai with no other options, were treated relatively did well, did hard work but were paid extremely well for it, and went from being poor to being upper middle class in their home countries after their tenure was over. > That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good". The author didn't make an attempt to get the average wages, or how the process works on average, or how widespread any abuses are. She didn't publish anyone's account who came out well in Dubai, and there's many. She didn't write about the people who, by working in Dubai for a couple years, made enough to live very well in their home countries, buy property, send their kids to good schools, and get their families out of poverty. That happened too. That's the good I was referring to.
    - crux 17y ago
      I think you're missing the point. The general argument here is: we're all aware of the accounts of those who have done well. Dubai was up until recently quite obviously prosperous. I have no doubt that the stewardesses of Emirates Airlines were doing marvelously. But if the lowest stratum of Dubai suffers these conditions, then the prosperity of the Emirates Airlines stewardess is blood money.
yesimahuman 17y ago
Why anyone would relocate to a country living in the dark ages with Medieval laws is beyond me. Commit adultry? Go to prison. Eat a poppy-seed bagel in another airport on your way to Dubai and leave a seed on your shirt? Same thing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7234786.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7234786.stm
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  Fuck Dubai. No flashy tourist attraction is worth that kind of risk.
  - zemaj 17y ago
    That's unfair. Thanks to terrorism the US & most western countries now laws that can decimate your privacy & can hold you in prison with little to no evidence. We put up with it because we know that by the numbers there's little chance of it affecting us as individuals. The same goes for Dubai. Even those laws exist, you're unlikely to be affected by them and most of the time the police look the other way even if you do get caught by one of the ridiculous laws.
    - gnosis 17y ago
      The increased paranoia in the US after 9/11 is a good point. But it hasn't had negligible effects. Tourism in the US has suffered because of the hassles and risks of getting in to (and out of) the country. Fewer people are coming to work and study in the US, and Americans in other countries are being treated worse as payback for the shameful treatment their citizens get in the US. The people who have least to worry from the state paranoia are the privileged classes, races, and ethnicities (ie. wealthy whites). But if you're part of the non-white underclass (nevermind Muslim), you can bet the post-9/11 paranoia and increased vigor of the police state is going to be of some concern (sometimes to the degree of fleeing the country if you're able). Something similar is probably the case in Dubai. If you're wealthy enough, and/or have enough connections, you're probably not going to have to worry too much (except maybe about the polluted beaches, if you insist on taking a dip in the sea outside your hotel room) as long as you don't try to interfere in their politics. But the worry of running afoul of their draconian laws and of being exploited by their oppressive system increases and becomes more legitimate the lower on the totem pole you get.
brown9-2 17y ago
The more I read about Dubai's "debt is illegal" policy, the more counter-productive it seems. If you lose your job, the employer has to notify the bank. The bank freezes your accounts and you are prevented from leaving the country. Thus, you are left with absolutely zero way to ever pay off your debt. What's the proper economics term for this? Something along the lines of a self-fulfilling negative spiral.
- jhancock 17y ago
  It certainly seems short sited. I think a good part of the secret sauce for the U.S. is that we allow people/businesses to fail (bankruptcy).
  - heyitsnick 17y ago
    I'm not sure how secret that sauce is. Declaring bankruptcy in one form or another is common throughout the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankrupcy#In_individual_countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankrupcy#In_individual_countri...
- pyre 17y ago
  Europe did it back in the day. If you were a debtor you were thrown in debtors' prison until you paid off your debt... but you can't earn any money while you are in debtors' prison... Catch-22. I'm assuming that it's meant as a deterrent to try and prevent people from getting into debt in the first place. Not that it's a very good (or humane) idea though.
  - philwelch 17y ago
    The mafia will just kill you. That makes even less sense since they have to spend money on a hitman.
    - pyre 17y ago
      I imagine that loan sharks must just extort people for money by terrorizing them with physical violence much more often than they actually kill anyone. Otherwise their lending practices would cause them to lose money hand over fist.
physcab 17y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719
hristov 17y ago
While these are truly horrible stories, it has to be noted that you cannot just explain them with some racist reference to arabs. This is just the logical conclusion of certain free market policies without regard for human rights and human well being. In fact for every horrible story you read about in this article there is a politician in the US trying to bring that story to America. If you enact tort reform, reform the bankruptcy laws, remove worker protections and minimum wage laws, and remove environmental regulations, you will get exactly the same type of outcome as you are getting in Dubai.
- ams6110 17y ago
  There's a balance. Too few protections or too many are destabilizing.
zandorg 17y ago
A recent re-appraisal based on the idea that loads of journalists were bitching too much about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/dubai-world-desert-gulf-investors http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/dubai-world-dese...
- gnosis 17y ago
  It's good to hear a different view from someone with a "yachtsman friend", who appreciates the "affordable domestic help" in Dubai, and "salves his conscience by giving a bigger tip to the Asian waiter or Indian taxi driver".
  - nate_meurer 17y ago
    Please note the context of self-deprecation that accompanies the quote about the tips. The writer is admitting to his own frivolity here.
    - gnosis 17y ago
      Duly noted, as are his attempts to trivialize the plight of the slaves upon who's backs Dubai was built.
Aegean 17y ago
This is no surprise. If you build a whole investment empire based solely on the value of housing, those cheap bricks you build turn against you one day. No social investments, no technology, just plain luxury and housing. Have you seen that artificial palm drawn on the sea? For me, that symbolizes how artificial things were in Dubai, and good old karma gave them what they deserved.
- potatolicious 17y ago
  I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling schadenfreude at Dubai's current predicament. I, at least, feel vindicated that good old common sense appears to have trumped wild disconnection from reality caused by wealth. More proof that no country can survive without producing any of tangible value.
  - abalashov 17y ago
    Hopefully this poetic justice will engulf the Web 2.0 startup economy too.
moo 17y ago
What about that Abu Dhabi story about a Sheikh Issa torturing a grain merchant on tape. I'll stay out of countries ruled by royals. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/09/uae.torture/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/09/uae.torture/index.... Edit: Wikipedia shows that sheikh can be an honorific Arab term and I meant a royal or monarch.
chrischen 17y ago
I believe I saw a documentary or special on Discovery (I think) about the building of the Burj Al Arab. They hired in a fancy designer to decorate the interior, and the Sheik or whoever was in charge, in all his vast knowledge, complained about the design being too bland and apparently forced her to redesign it. I hate it when people who don't know what they are doing have a lot of power, and worse when they start telling people who do know what they're doing how to do it.
modelic3 17y ago
Does nobody learn about thermodynamics in school any more? It's not like an economic system is not susceptible to the same laws that govern any other physical system. If some people are living like kings then there must be others that are living like slaves.
- modelic3 17y ago
  What the hell man? What's with the downvotes.
  - ryanwaggoner 17y ago
    Economics is not physics, and quality of life is not a zero sum game.
    - modelic3 17y ago
      It certainly is. My original point still stands. Nothing is created out of nothing and quality of life is related to existence of various goods that are governed by physical and economic rules. So if some people have too much then others don't have enough.
occam 17y ago
I have a hard time believing this about Australians: "...Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. "
dsplittgerber 17y ago
This was already submitted when it was published back in the spring: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719
kazuya 17y ago
Joi Ito has another view on this: http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2009/04/15/followup-to-my.html http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2009/04/15/followup-to-my.html
known 17y ago
I heard Arab nations treat non-muslims as non-humans

103 points by gnosis 17y ago

yangyang 17y ago

This is from April, btw.

TrevorBramble 17y ago
As someone who read it in April, I'm glad it's still being shared.
- jpcx01 17y ago
  Agreed, but I'd like to see it brought up to date with the current financial crises. I wonder if things are better or worse now that all projects are brought to a hold, these real estate companies are going bankrupt. Will they allow these immigrants to return to their homes, or continue to enforce the debts of passage?

lionhearted 17y ago

I've spent a bit of time in Dubai. It's not quite what the author makes it out to be. I've heard about the abuses - there are some and it's horrible - but it's not indicative of the way most people are running their businesses in Dubai. A mentor of mine from England headed up a project management firm there. The workers under him made 20-40 times what they could make back home in South Asia, in places where the malnourishment/literally-starving-to-death rate is sometimes 30%. An acquaintance of mine who worked in Dubai had a Chinese girlfriend who was a stewardess on Emirates Airlines. Emirates is pretty incredible in that they pay the same amounts to their staff regardless of country of origin - almost all airlines and cruiselines pay much less to people from China, the Philippines, etc, than they would to someone from France or Australia. Emirates pays everyone the same. The acquaintence's Chinese girlfriend bought one house every couple months back in her home province in China on her wages. Her family was becoming incredibly wealthy. A company taking someone's passport and changing their contract is really horrible fraud, a horrific crime. But that's an indictment of the whole society - this kind of nonsense happens in the West too. Take South Korea and the United States - a common story is a girl gets promised high paid waitressing/hostessing job, gets sold into slavery. This is a terrible thing, and should be stopped - but does that mean that United States is running on slave labor? No. A few bad people is not an indictment of an entire society. For a lot of very poor people, Dubai helped pull their families out of poverty. The did some amazing things there. Those things won't be mentioned in a piece like this. People who would be living on subsistence farming in China build houses and manage property after working in Dubai. People from Sri Lanka, India, and Eastern Europe can support their whole families and save money after working there for a couple years, in places where there is no opportunity and everyone is literally starving to death. The author doesn't care about the good. The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story. There's some bad stuff there? Oh yeah, absolutely. There's bad stuff in the USA too. And England. And everywhere. There's also a hell of a lot of good that's happening there, that wasn't mentioned.

brown9-2 17y ago
The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story. I'm not sure how you can make this claim. Do you have knowledge of the chronology of the author's events as to when she wrote the article and when she performed the numerous interviews - with both sides - in the article? The author doesn't care about the good. I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud. That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".
- lionhearted 17y ago
  > I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud. I don't mean the big buildings - I mean the author doesn't mention all the good that happened for a lot of workers that came to Dubai with no other options, were treated relatively did well, did hard work but were paid extremely well for it, and went from being poor to being upper middle class in their home countries after their tenure was over. > That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good". The author didn't make an attempt to get the average wages, or how the process works on average, or how widespread any abuses are. She didn't publish anyone's account who came out well in Dubai, and there's many. She didn't write about the people who, by working in Dubai for a couple years, made enough to live very well in their home countries, buy property, send their kids to good schools, and get their families out of poverty. That happened too. That's the good I was referring to.
  - crux 17y ago
    I think you're missing the point. The general argument here is: we're all aware of the accounts of those who have done well. Dubai was up until recently quite obviously prosperous. I have no doubt that the stewardesses of Emirates Airlines were doing marvelously. But if the lowest stratum of Dubai suffers these conditions, then the prosperity of the Emirates Airlines stewardess is blood money.

yesimahuman 17y ago

Why anyone would relocate to a country living in the dark ages with Medieval laws is beyond me. Commit adultry? Go to prison. Eat a poppy-seed bagel in another airport on your way to Dubai and leave a seed on your shirt? Same thing. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7234786.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7234786.stm

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Fuck Dubai. No flashy tourist attraction is worth that kind of risk.
- zemaj 17y ago
  That's unfair. Thanks to terrorism the US & most western countries now laws that can decimate your privacy & can hold you in prison with little to no evidence. We put up with it because we know that by the numbers there's little chance of it affecting us as individuals. The same goes for Dubai. Even those laws exist, you're unlikely to be affected by them and most of the time the police look the other way even if you do get caught by one of the ridiculous laws.
  - gnosis 17y ago
    The increased paranoia in the US after 9/11 is a good point. But it hasn't had negligible effects. Tourism in the US has suffered because of the hassles and risks of getting in to (and out of) the country. Fewer people are coming to work and study in the US, and Americans in other countries are being treated worse as payback for the shameful treatment their citizens get in the US. The people who have least to worry from the state paranoia are the privileged classes, races, and ethnicities (ie. wealthy whites). But if you're part of the non-white underclass (nevermind Muslim), you can bet the post-9/11 paranoia and increased vigor of the police state is going to be of some concern (sometimes to the degree of fleeing the country if you're able). Something similar is probably the case in Dubai. If you're wealthy enough, and/or have enough connections, you're probably not going to have to worry too much (except maybe about the polluted beaches, if you insist on taking a dip in the sea outside your hotel room) as long as you don't try to interfere in their politics. But the worry of running afoul of their draconian laws and of being exploited by their oppressive system increases and becomes more legitimate the lower on the totem pole you get.

brown9-2 17y ago

The more I read about Dubai's "debt is illegal" policy, the more counter-productive it seems. If you lose your job, the employer has to notify the bank. The bank freezes your accounts and you are prevented from leaving the country. Thus, you are left with absolutely zero way to ever pay off your debt. What's the proper economics term for this? Something along the lines of a self-fulfilling negative spiral.

jhancock 17y ago
It certainly seems short sited. I think a good part of the secret sauce for the U.S. is that we allow people/businesses to fail (bankruptcy).
- heyitsnick 17y ago
  I'm not sure how secret that sauce is. Declaring bankruptcy in one form or another is common throughout the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankrupcy#In_individual_countries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankrupcy#In_individual_countri...
pyre 17y ago
Europe did it back in the day. If you were a debtor you were thrown in debtors' prison until you paid off your debt... but you can't earn any money while you are in debtors' prison... Catch-22. I'm assuming that it's meant as a deterrent to try and prevent people from getting into debt in the first place. Not that it's a very good (or humane) idea though.
- philwelch 17y ago
  The mafia will just kill you. That makes even less sense since they have to spend money on a hitman.
  - pyre 17y ago
    I imagine that loan sharks must just extort people for money by terrorizing them with physical violence much more often than they actually kill anyone. Otherwise their lending practices would cause them to lose money hand over fist.

physcab 17y ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719

hristov 17y ago

While these are truly horrible stories, it has to be noted that you cannot just explain them with some racist reference to arabs. This is just the logical conclusion of certain free market policies without regard for human rights and human well being. In fact for every horrible story you read about in this article there is a politician in the US trying to bring that story to America. If you enact tort reform, reform the bankruptcy laws, remove worker protections and minimum wage laws, and remove environmental regulations, you will get exactly the same type of outcome as you are getting in Dubai.

ams6110 17y ago
There's a balance. Too few protections or too many are destabilizing.

zandorg 17y ago

A recent re-appraisal based on the idea that loads of journalists were bitching too much about it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/dubai-world-desert-gulf-investors http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/dubai-world-dese...

gnosis 17y ago
It's good to hear a different view from someone with a "yachtsman friend", who appreciates the "affordable domestic help" in Dubai, and "salves his conscience by giving a bigger tip to the Asian waiter or Indian taxi driver".
- nate_meurer 17y ago
  Please note the context of self-deprecation that accompanies the quote about the tips. The writer is admitting to his own frivolity here.
  - gnosis 17y ago
    Duly noted, as are his attempts to trivialize the plight of the slaves upon who's backs Dubai was built.

Aegean 17y ago

This is no surprise. If you build a whole investment empire based solely on the value of housing, those cheap bricks you build turn against you one day. No social investments, no technology, just plain luxury and housing. Have you seen that artificial palm drawn on the sea? For me, that symbolizes how artificial things were in Dubai, and good old karma gave them what they deserved.

potatolicious 17y ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling schadenfreude at Dubai's current predicament. I, at least, feel vindicated that good old common sense appears to have trumped wild disconnection from reality caused by wealth. More proof that no country can survive without producing any of tangible value.
- abalashov 17y ago
  Hopefully this poetic justice will engulf the Web 2.0 startup economy too.

moo 17y ago

What about that Abu Dhabi story about a Sheikh Issa torturing a grain merchant on tape. I'll stay out of countries ruled by royals. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/09/uae.torture/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/09/uae.torture/index.... Edit: Wikipedia shows that sheikh can be an honorific Arab term and I meant a royal or monarch.

chrischen 17y ago

I believe I saw a documentary or special on Discovery (I think) about the building of the Burj Al Arab. They hired in a fancy designer to decorate the interior, and the Sheik or whoever was in charge, in all his vast knowledge, complained about the design being too bland and apparently forced her to redesign it. I hate it when people who don't know what they are doing have a lot of power, and worse when they start telling people who do know what they're doing how to do it.

modelic3 17y ago

Does nobody learn about thermodynamics in school any more? It's not like an economic system is not susceptible to the same laws that govern any other physical system. If some people are living like kings then there must be others that are living like slaves.

modelic3 17y ago
What the hell man? What's with the downvotes.
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  Economics is not physics, and quality of life is not a zero sum game.
  - modelic3 17y ago
    It certainly is. My original point still stands. Nothing is created out of nothing and quality of life is related to existence of various goods that are governed by physical and economic rules. So if some people have too much then others don't have enough.

occam 17y ago

I have a hard time believing this about Australians: "...Madam made me work from 6am to 1am every day, with no day off. I was exhausted and pleaded for a break, but they just shouted: 'You came here to work, not sleep!' Then one day I just couldn't go on, and Madam beat me. She beat me with her fists and kicked me. "

dsplittgerber 17y ago

This was already submitted when it was published back in the spring: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719

kazuya 17y ago

Joi Ito has another view on this: http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2009/04/15/followup-to-my.html http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2009/04/15/followup-to-my.html

known 17y ago

I heard Arab nations treat non-muslims as non-humans