I normally love your analyses, but this one made me physically ill.
Dubai is built on modern slavery. Exploitation and extraction levied against foreign workers with virtually no rights to begin with, and no ability to assert them.
Dubai, like Singapore, is simply a modern conservative society - law enforcing a social order.
I’ve looked into this quite a lot. I talked with about a dozen foreigners in Dubai, from taxi drivers to bartenders and expats. I skimmed the reports from organizations like amnesty international, read the policies of Dubai on the topic, discussed this with AIs, compared the situation with that in other countries, all of that aside from a lot of thinking and reading about immigration. I decided to leave it out of the Dubai article because it would have become all about that.
Here’s what I think: this is a problem, but much less than is normally assumed, and the pros of the policy overwhelm the cons.
1. This used to be a big problem
2. It is much less so now. For example, withholding passports is now illegal, and wages must be paid electronically.
3. Immigrants know this, and have seen it enforced
4. Every single immigrant I talked with was very happy to be there
5. In general their lifestyle in Dubai might not be as good as they’d like, but they’re making so much more money than in their home countries, in a safe and calm environment, that not a single one regretted the decision
6. It’s not realistic to think Dubai would extend the same benefits of a local to a foreign immigrant. This should also not be the case in western countries either, and the fact that it sometimes is is the cause of so much backlash against immigration (a terrible thing since immigration is net good)
7. The problem is worse in other countries like Qatar, which became famous because of the World Cup. Some people mix them together because their ignorance bundles all these countries together.
All of this suggests people criticizing it seem to be virtue signaling more than actually caring about making the lives of the supposed victims better.
And if you were just talking about geography and economics, it would make sense.
But once you start talking about tax policy, you are doing a reverse form of virtue signaling - that there is an inherent value to lower taxes.
At that point, you are open to questions about how state-driven growth (which Dubai is) can coexist with lower taxes. If I told you I had a car that gave double the horsepower for half the gas, I would have a duty to explain how that might occur.
There are a few states, almost always micro states like Hong Kong before China, Singapore, and Dubai, that have achieved this mystery, and they usually have at least one of three characteristics:
1. Resource exploitation (oil, which you do a great job of explaining)
2. Land reclamation - “creating” land that can be sold at speculative prices. In the old days that was indigenous land or the Norman conquest, now it is filling in the harbor and selling.
3. Labor exploitation - trading in the arbitrage between cost and value, often through terrible class disparity.
This is not virtue signaling, it is basic economics and politics. Dubai has the virtue of participating in all three, one of which, land reclamation, has had devastating effects on water quality and will likely destroy the port at some point.
Dubai is a class system, indisputably, as is Singapore. Singapore’s is more insidious in many ways, but Dubai’s is out in the open. Its massive growth has undeniably been on the backs of exploited labor provided few services and little legal protection. Under the Kafala system, Emiratis receive extensive benefits (housing allowances, guaranteed government jobs, subsidies), while the 90% expatriate population gets $200-400 per month.
You can make the case that this is “in the past”, but it likely isn’t, and the low tax environment becomes a corvee system.
If you want to make the tax case, or even the geographic case, and you ignore either labor or land exploitation, you are virtue signaling, just on the Randian side.
1. Technically, H1B in US is also Kafala, because you have to leave the country when fired (same with Switzerland). And no ICE in UAE
2. Literally hundreds of thousands people try to get into UAE by any means possible. They arrive on tourist visas, print hundreds of resumes, and literally walking around giving them to anyone.
3. I leave close to a few major construction sites in Abu Dhabi and workers do not work at night and during hottest hours, they use their phones, look ok, etc.
4. I was shown an educational movie about my rights (wage, passport, etc) before getting a work permit and electronic wage protection system will automatically FINE the employer if he decides not to pay. My understanding is that government cares a lot about reputation and actually tries to punish blatant exploitation.
5. UAE has paid sick leave, maternity leave, cheap health insurance, end-of-service payments which courts are actually enforce.
Fist off, you are absolutely correct on ICE. It is an abomination, and a grave sin on my country.
To the man issue, it is absolutely fascinating that folks are ok with corvee labor.
I am not surprised that people want jobs in UAE, mostly because life is hellish for the vast portion of the global south. That is not the issue.
Under Kafala, a sponsor (kafeel)—typically the employer—has significant control over the worker’s legal status, including their ability to change jobs, leave the country, or even access certain services. Workers often surrender their passports, and leaving an employer without permission can result in legal penalties. This creates conditions vulnerable to exploitation, debt bondage, and labor abuse, particularly for low-wage migrant workers in construction, domestic work, and service sectors.
H1B is the U.S. temporary work visa program for specialty occupations requiring specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or higher. While visa holders are sponsored by and tied to specific employers, they have more mobility—they can change employers through visa transfers without permission from the bonded employer, though this requires the new employer to file paperwork. H1B workers retain their passports, can leave the country freely, and have legal recourse through U.S. labor and employment laws. There’s also a clear pathway to permanent residency (green card) that many pursue.
Both are exploitative, for certain.
In Dubai, the purpose of the program is to obtain the lowest cost labor possible. In H1B, The law requires employers to pay the higher of either the actual wage paid to similar workers or the “prevailing wage” for that occupation in that geographic area.
Obviously, H1Bs have issues - it can be difficult to find a subsequent sponsor, employers play games to lower salaries, but in Dubai the arbitrage is massive and literally supports the economy, in the us H1B is a rounding error.
85% of the population of Dubai is in or effectively Kafala.
0.18% of the population of the US is H1B
The US has had spectacular success with bringing in Somalis in Minneapolis and Haitians in Springfield. A transformational effect to bring new people who have energy and want to work, and are afforded the ability to own property and participate. This is the right model.
What one has to wonder is why so many people are ok with exploitation at the level of Dubai. The original sin of mankind wasn’t a f—king apple, it is the willingness to countenance a belief that some people are inherently superior to others.
That you think Somalian or Haitian immigration to the USA is even a slight success honestly is telling. They are overrepresented in rape, theft, scams and are a very large economic net drain. Such a class of immigrants should only ever be here on guest worker contracts rather than becoming a clannish crime/welfare class who also sexually harass women. In a state of equality such people are a drain. And you can only take in so many net drain individuals - Dubai can have a revolving door and give opportunity to more people.
They are also highly racist and ethnocentric - but align with the left because their ethnocentrism pegs mainstream America as the outgroup - the worst combination
To be more precise, I cannot prove that it doesn't happen, but I'm sure that it is not a widespread problem and laws are more protective of workers than in US
A legal guest worker in the US is required to be paid the same or more as an equivalent US citizen (obviously there are cheats, but in the range of 10-20% less). Professional expats (H1B equivalent) in Dubai are paid less than half of what citizens make.
Legal immigrants in the US make roughly equivalent wages because they are treated legally equally.
Illegal immigrants make 1/2 to 1/3 what low wage citizens make in the US. Kafala labor makes 1/40 to 1/50th.
All of this elides the fact that there are totally different legal systems for the emir, the citizens, and labor.
I don't have means to check the passport claim specifically, but I met a lot of let's say low-paid unskilled workers, and every one of them is flying to their home country once a year. Again, witholding passports and wages iis clearly illegal and definitely enforced. Labor courts and police are also very effective here (speaking from experience), so claim that 85% of workers don't have the passports, don't get wages, and cannot leave is false.
Any system that creates different sets of rights for employers and employed is wrong. Your article is a gross apology for a system that is essentially corrupt.
I don’t care about whether people can drink or wear bikinis. Different cultures, different rules. I do’t care if 2% or 80% of there revenue is from oil. Casting the withholding of passports as some combination of collateral or paternalism is gross and shameful. By your logic, organ sales would be reasonable provided the donor was paid and made money that could be sent home.
It is not a lie that Dubai, like Singapore, is a class system. It is not a lie that there are different sets of rules for the rulers, the rulesd, and the exploited. It is encoded into statute for all to see. It is not a lie that passports are withheld, restricting escape, and wages are also withheld, without equal access to the law. Defending exploitation by claiming “You should see how shitty it is for them in Pakistan” doesn’t change that it is exploitation.
That Dubai, for its wealth, provides zero care is grotesque. They benefit massively from immigration but pride themselves on providing no support.
I get it, you are a Milton Friedman/Randian. That is where the grotesqueness comes from.
Tell me you've never talked to a taxi driver in Dubai without telling me.
Seriously, where does your confidence come from that your opinion is correct? Have you really studied the subject? How much time have you spent in Dubai? How much time have you spent talking to the “oppressed” people?
Or are you just repeating things you've seen on the Internet, without taking the time to check them out for yourself?
Do yourself a favor : next time you are in Dubai, talk with all the taxi drivers you can. And to the waiters, workers, immigrants you see everywhere.
Ask them if they chose to come to Dubai voluntary, if people confiscated their passport, and why they are here.
Peggy Noonan, Michael Barone, Victor Davis Hanson, Salena Zito, Rod Liddle, Allister Heath, Melanie Phillips, James Delingpole, Tucker Carlson, Dennis Prager, Douglas Murray, Dinesh D’Souza, Mark Steyn, Theodore Dalrymple, Toby Young, Charles Moore, Daniel Hannan
All of them. It is the cheapest trick in the book. Economics is a system, as is politics. Systems of humans behave in predictable ways.
When you create a class system with differential outcomes based on class, you always get exploitation. Always.
I get it. You are Randian. But the Dubai system has multiple sets of rules, and such systems can reliably create “clean” and “safe” cities by consuming a underclass. It is not new.
I have traveled to about half of the countries of the world, studied political science, philosophy, and computer science, and have run companies and been on the boards of significant nonprofits.
I read actual books. With paper. Lots and lots of them.
Lose the taxi driver tripe. It is hackneyed and mildly embarrassing. Read Manuel Delanda.
Yeah, it's a tough question of whether it's right to let people come in and work and be treated much worse than your citizens, versus not letting them in and leaving them in thier own countries where thier situation is presumably even worse. On some level though, we're all taking advantage of cheap labor when we buy things from other countries, bringing in people to work for next to nothing just opens up more industries like construction
They can have a guest work program that isn’t predatory. Collateralizing freedom to recoup state fees is predatory, and the state could repeal the fees or provide services to police and punish the companies holding the passports.
They do neither.
It is low taxes for the wealthy but punitive fees on labor.
Countries behave badly, and deeply stratified, absolutist countries behave abominably. We can’t fix the world, but lauding blatant exploitation is not reasonable.
Can they really do that? Every country I can think of which insists on treating their guest workers much more like natives also lets in very few immigrants. So in practice, it appears like it’s not politically possible to give opportunities to a large number of people unless you do not treat them the same as native people which is still better than treating them worse than native people by not even letting them into the country.
The question I am raising isn’t whether our economic system worldwide has serious issues. It is the idea of somehow lauding the Dubai system of low taxes and high service as a model when it is a totalitarian regime that cannot exist without creating an underclass 6x its size without meaningful (much less equivalent) human rights.
Of course exploitation will happen wherever there is power, just don’t act like you have created a magical model for governance.
I see. You're focusing on the stealing er confiscating passports, which yeah is pretty clearly bad. Absent that, I was just saying that you could argue every country exploits the cheap labor in other countries, whether through "guest workers" or goods made by sweatshops. It's hard to draw a line between giving people in other countries opportunities vs exploiting them.
That is absolutely true. There is no modern life as we know it without immiserating someone.
What makes me sick about this article is it is a hagiography for a particularly grievous kind of exploitation. Dubai would not exist in its current form without:
1. Resource extraction
2. Environmental degradation (they have significantly harmed their coast with those moronic reclamation projects, leading to lower water quality, silting up, etc.
3. Massive human exploitation. They are premier-level at human exploitation.
Of course, that is how India, China, the UK, and the US did it, so should we judge?
At the very least we shouldn’t pretend it was some miracle of management. Low taxes have to be compensated for.
Clearly you are someone who buys the western narrative of the middle east version of "slavery", people are happy to be in Dubai and they do have the option to come here or leave the country if it does not suit their needs. You should be ashamed of using your western version of morals to judge a country which is successful.
If success relies upon massive class distinction, it is not laudable. This is not easy or west.
40:1 wages is not justifiable.
Treating everything contactable as ethical is being not ethical. If someone willingly sells their organs because they need the money, is that ethical? Should we allow people to sell their future earnings to get education? Should we re-introduce debtors prisons or indentures?
Of course not, because contract-ability is not justification, and desperation does not provide ethical cover, except to sociopaths.
Also, to summarize one of my points about what gives Dubai such a feeling of freedom:
"For several years, I haven’t needed to show a passport at Dubai airport: facial recognition identifies me and the gate opens automatically. It’s efficient—but it also shows how easily governments can track people. In Dubai, cameras are everywhere and actively used by police; finding a stolen car is trivial. If you can track cars, you can track individuals.
The UAE clearly offers fewer political freedoms than Western democracies, so yes—mass surveillance bothers me. But, paradoxically, less than it would in my home country.
Why? Two reasons. First, the balance of power is different. There’s a distinct implicit contract between someone born into a country and someone who chooses a country in a competitive market of jurisdictions. The mono-country person is constrained by inertia—language, ties, habits—and feels the state’s weight acutely. The nomad arrives as a customer. If the value deteriorates or surveillance becomes too heavy, he can—and should—leave.
That possibility fundamentally rebalances power. I can choose where to live and contribute, and states must compete to keep me. So I know that if Dubai no longer suits me, I’ll leave. Accepting slightly more state power is the trade-off for having strong exit power. In practice, voting with your feet balances power better than voting at the ballot box—an essential insight when choosing your first expatriate country."
Tomas - Very insightful piece on Dubai's history and regulatory evolution as a trading hub (especially the early quasi-SEZ policy leading to certain institutional and cultural attitudes preventing the trap of the rentier state - quintessential example of historical path dependence).
But in all honesty, I think a big blind spot here is your article not grappling with the UAE's external political economy. The same trade and financial infrastructure that enabled Dubai's rise is deployed to bankroll and shield actors that destabilize the region while reinforcing the UAE's positioning in trade flows. You can't have a conversation about Dubai or the UAE without considering their support for the RSF in Sudan (orchestrating the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe) and Haftar's campaign in Libya.
Dubai's isn't some neat and neutral "anti-petrostate" success story. It's part of a broader Emirati model combining hyper-efficient internal order with outsourced genocide and chaos abroad. Sure, we can admire the internal governance mechanics but still need to ask whether this is sustainable after taking into account the externalities.
I would also be extremely hesitant to characterize Dubai as a symbol of "modern Islam". Most Muslims of cosmopolitan sensibilities around the world see little overlap between Quranic ideals of industrious austerity or consensus-based bottoms-up governance (with nothing holy except God) vs Dubai's opulent hyper-consumption and top-down heavy-handedness - treating its state apparatus as divine itself.
My hypothesis is that most of what you’re saying here relates to Abu Dhabi’s role, as it does have a ton of oil, which it uses for some of the things you mention.
I’m not sure I’d use your definition for “modern Muslim”, but your opinion is valid, I don’t have data supporting my position either there.
Very interesting, thanks (if a tad too rose tinted glasses).
I do find the land reclamation projects hilariously wasteful, though, as Dubai has plentiful flat, stable land immediately inland for development with no environmental concerns whatsoever (even if the Emiratis cared).
I think this piece on Dubai is incomplete without telling about some of the fundamental flaws the country has.
The history on how it became a freestate for trading and investment is interesting and explains to a great extent the wealth that is amassed in the place though.
I like reading your articles a lot. Not because I alway agree with you but because I think you are an original thinker, can combine multiple disciplines and do a lot of reasoning based on first principles. This one is not up to standards though
There is plenty to criticize about Dubai, but this article is not just about Dubai. This article is about the lessons it can teach us about the world. And I think all of them are quite positive. If this article had been about Yemen, or Abu Dhabi, or Saudi Arabia, it would be different (as you’ll soon see).
This reads in parts like a paid advert for Dubai, which it may well be.
Part of your conclusion stood out to me, and it almost read like irony.
"A Muslim monarchy can be tolerant, welcoming, rich, dynamic, and cosmopolitan."
Dubai may be welcoming, rich, dynamic, and cosmopolitan, but tolerant it is not. It's actually famously authoritarian, and has zero tolerance for political dissent or criticism of the government, criminalises LGBTQ+ relationships, strictly censors media and speech, and systemically exploits migrant workers, among other intolerant policies and norms.
In case this is not clear, this is not a paid advertising.
Funnily, nobody has accused me of such things when I write articles about, say, the U.S.
when I have a conflict of interest, I disclose it.
People misunderstand tolerance. A key tenet is that we should tolerant of everything but intolerance.
This is not something the West has done well.
Dubai has chosen a path where it says: I won’t force anybody to be here. But if you are hear, just don’t criticize the government in a way that could threaten it. That sounds to me like an acceptable choice. If you don’t want to be there, it don’t be there. Vote with your feet.
The groups you mention are welcome to be there as long as they don’t rock the boat publicly. When they do, they are not imprisoned, they’re extradited.
If it’s not for you, just don’t go there. I think that’s quite fair.
It’s definitely much fairer than any other place in the Middle East, bar Israel.
Sure but America and Europe are doing the same as we speak, you can point l fingers at other places but you have to acknowledge that at the moment you can’t have free speech or criticize Govs in the Uk, the U.S ..etc
In America citizens are arrested based on how they look right not and God forbid you criticize that one colonial project in the Middle East who’s murdering children by the thousands. I’m not from Dubai nor do I care about it but we have to be fair about our criticism.
How does it "exploit" workers? If passports are with held so they can't leave, fair comment, but that's happening with trafficking gangs in the west too.
If you just mean "they get paid less than I would like and they have to work hard" - well they can go home. Obviously they've decided the conditions are better in Dubai than wherever they came from.
Given that there's 4.5m people and most are foreign, it seems unlikely that the vast majority aren't there voluntarily
I’m surprised there is no mention at all about Dubai’s - well known - reputation as a money‑laundering hub, especially in relation to its real‑estate market and free‑trade zones.
The very mechanisms that facilitate massive foreign investment (tax‑free policies, free zones, luxury real‑estate, etc) have also attracted the money‑laundering which for a large part is fueling Dubai’s construction boom.
And not to speak even of the UAE’s - to put it mildly - dubious role in the genocide in Sudan and the gold it imports from there.
Transparency International : Dubai is a “money‑laundering paradise,” the emirate’s open economy and lax oversight make it attractive to corrupt and criminal actors from around the world.
Investigations by NGOs (e.g., OCF Report, AMlNetwork) point to systematic weaknesses in anti‑money‑laundering (AML) controls, especially in property transactions where opaque ownership structures allow large sums of illicit cash to be integrated into the economy.
I’d be hard to argue it isn’t highly relevant geopolitically. When large volumes of illicit capital flow into a country’s real‑estate market and free‑trade zones, it does more than just boost construction. It reshapes the economic landscape in ways that can alter political influence and strategic interests (beyond that country’s borders).
Wealthy individuals that evade scrutiny can acquire high‑profile assets, gaining social and political clout that may translate into lobbying power or informal influence over policy decisions.
And on top of that it enables those to continue their illicit activities, which can have an effect far beyond where those activities occur or where the money is laundered.
Furthermore illicit funds can be funneled to groups or regimes that are at odds with international norms, potentially financing activities that destabilise neighbouring regions (e.g. the links to the genocide in Sudan).
And then I haven’t mentioned how the reputation of a country can be damaged by money laundering. And that will affect how other countries interact with said country.
Great and concise article. I knew about the Dubai skyline and attempts to diversify from oil, but I would've guessed it was still 40-50% of its economic output. One is always learning when reading Uncharted Territories!
Just a note on your comment about what "a Muslim monarchy" can be. Vague recollections from the Arab Spring period of commentaries that the monarchies were far more stable and/or tolerant than the republics (Egypt/Syria/Iraq/Iran/Yemen/Libya). The monarchs weathered the 2010s far better than the non-monarchs.
Enjoyed that. Nice demonstration of the resource paradox - the general assumption would be that the adjacent oil rich cities would do better but extractive industries often breed complacency. Those that have to create often end up generating far more value.
There's clearly lessons for other states too - most notably that under the radar, focused improvement combined with broadly free economics is a strong recipe for prosperity.
the "my grandfather rode a camel, my grandson will too" quote hits different when you realize dubai's entire strategy was speed. they knew the oil wouldn't last, so they used it as leverage to build infrastructure now instead of extracting rents forever. most countries with resource windfalls do the opposite – optimize for immediate consumption, assume the good times last. curious if this works anywhere outside city-states though.
Dubai: "the UAE is not known for freedom. Criticism of rulers, state institutions, religion, or “social harmony” can lead to detention. Online speech, including social media posts, is closely monitored. ... Public morality laws affect dress, alcohol, relationships."
US: "(M)y speech was not much more free in (San Francisco), as I always had to be very conscious of what I said and how it would land with people, for fear of making a faux pas or hurting sensitivities."
These aren't even *remotely* equivocable.
I'd rather live somewhere like the U.S. or Western Europe, where I am free to hurt someone's sensitive feelings or make a mild faux pas, and then walk away (or maybe get called a name)... than somewhere like Dubai or Russia or Thailand, where I accidentally say something offhand and wind up being detained in prison for not falling in line with the Monarch or Tyrant.
Plus, regardless of how "smart" its leaders were, ultimately, what does Dubai have? Dubai has...money. The flimsiest of non-physical, volatile resources. It is a city-sized combination of the worst of Las Vegas and Zürich, with zero actual real resources or natural wealth. And all of its construction and outward sign of monetary wealth is currently built on the backs of imported slave labor.
Dubai is a playground for the rich, and holds little else for anyone lower than the upper 10-20%. (3)(4)
And unlike the U.S., the Gilded Age in Dubai has nowhere to exhale. The U.S. suffered through a Gild-smashing Great Depression, but used its wealth of natural resources to manufacture its way out of the hole.
One major global downturn, one Great Depression, and Dubai is toast.
However, the U.S., as you mentioned in a previous article (1), has a glut of natural resources to rely on for wealth, and though it has major labor inequalities, the vast majority of construction is not performed by essentially slave laborers, but by paid employees with actual labor laws.
One major global downturn, one Great Depression, and the U.S. is...badly injured, but recoverable.
Sadly, rather than explaining any deep-seated virtues of Dubai, and why it is misunderstood by xenophobes and jingoists, this article read as a Libertarian's dream pamphlet, created by the Dubai "Ministry of Truth" for those who's sole goal in life is to worship the accumulation of money, regardless of its impact on other humans.
To be blunt: After reading your article, I find Dubai to be even more reprehensible against the decency of humanity, that I did *before* reading it.
My only question is if "on a bright cold day in April", the diamond-encrusted clocks "strike thirteen" ...? (2)
There is something rather insidious in the way Dubai is "tolerant". It deliberately puts you at the mercy of the rulers. You are incentivised to be a law breaker under the guise of live and let live but this forever makes you a criminal that is not prosecuted. At any point you can be treated as a criminal if that is to the benefit of someone. This is arguably morally much more reprehensible then a state with strict laws that enforces them as this makes the rule of law arbitrary and thereby undermines it. They just make sure they don't have too many victims so people turn a blind eye but there are many examples of people that got screwed over.
Strangely no mention of Dubais migrant workers, who built all those shiny malls and towers but have few rights and routinely suffer abuse and extortion from employers. That’s the other side of the freedom vs ‘comfort’ tradeoff you mentioned.
"While Western media is filled with stories of intolerant, aggressive, backward-looking Islam, Dubai shows that this narrative doesn’t need to prevail. A Muslim monarchy can be tolerant, welcoming, rich, dynamic, and cosmopolitan."
All PDAs are unwelcome in Dubai. My understanding is if you do stuff in your own private sphere, nobody is going to bother you. From what I’ve read, those who break these rules are deported, not imprisoned.
Do I wish there was more freedom? Yes. Is the above deal a reasonable one for a Muslim country? I think so.
I normally love your analyses, but this one made me physically ill.
Dubai is built on modern slavery. Exploitation and extraction levied against foreign workers with virtually no rights to begin with, and no ability to assert them.
Dubai, like Singapore, is simply a modern conservative society - law enforcing a social order.
That is why millionaires like it.
For shame.
I’ve looked into this quite a lot. I talked with about a dozen foreigners in Dubai, from taxi drivers to bartenders and expats. I skimmed the reports from organizations like amnesty international, read the policies of Dubai on the topic, discussed this with AIs, compared the situation with that in other countries, all of that aside from a lot of thinking and reading about immigration. I decided to leave it out of the Dubai article because it would have become all about that.
Here’s what I think: this is a problem, but much less than is normally assumed, and the pros of the policy overwhelm the cons.
1. This used to be a big problem
2. It is much less so now. For example, withholding passports is now illegal, and wages must be paid electronically.
3. Immigrants know this, and have seen it enforced
4. Every single immigrant I talked with was very happy to be there
5. In general their lifestyle in Dubai might not be as good as they’d like, but they’re making so much more money than in their home countries, in a safe and calm environment, that not a single one regretted the decision
6. It’s not realistic to think Dubai would extend the same benefits of a local to a foreign immigrant. This should also not be the case in western countries either, and the fact that it sometimes is is the cause of so much backlash against immigration (a terrible thing since immigration is net good)
7. The problem is worse in other countries like Qatar, which became famous because of the World Cup. Some people mix them together because their ignorance bundles all these countries together.
All of this suggests people criticizing it seem to be virtue signaling more than actually caring about making the lives of the supposed victims better.
I get it.
And if you were just talking about geography and economics, it would make sense.
But once you start talking about tax policy, you are doing a reverse form of virtue signaling - that there is an inherent value to lower taxes.
At that point, you are open to questions about how state-driven growth (which Dubai is) can coexist with lower taxes. If I told you I had a car that gave double the horsepower for half the gas, I would have a duty to explain how that might occur.
There are a few states, almost always micro states like Hong Kong before China, Singapore, and Dubai, that have achieved this mystery, and they usually have at least one of three characteristics:
1. Resource exploitation (oil, which you do a great job of explaining)
2. Land reclamation - “creating” land that can be sold at speculative prices. In the old days that was indigenous land or the Norman conquest, now it is filling in the harbor and selling.
3. Labor exploitation - trading in the arbitrage between cost and value, often through terrible class disparity.
This is not virtue signaling, it is basic economics and politics. Dubai has the virtue of participating in all three, one of which, land reclamation, has had devastating effects on water quality and will likely destroy the port at some point.
Dubai is a class system, indisputably, as is Singapore. Singapore’s is more insidious in many ways, but Dubai’s is out in the open. Its massive growth has undeniably been on the backs of exploited labor provided few services and little legal protection. Under the Kafala system, Emiratis receive extensive benefits (housing allowances, guaranteed government jobs, subsidies), while the 90% expatriate population gets $200-400 per month.
You can make the case that this is “in the past”, but it likely isn’t, and the low tax environment becomes a corvee system.
If you want to make the tax case, or even the geographic case, and you ignore either labor or land exploitation, you are virtue signaling, just on the Randian side.
1. Technically, H1B in US is also Kafala, because you have to leave the country when fired (same with Switzerland). And no ICE in UAE
2. Literally hundreds of thousands people try to get into UAE by any means possible. They arrive on tourist visas, print hundreds of resumes, and literally walking around giving them to anyone.
3. I leave close to a few major construction sites in Abu Dhabi and workers do not work at night and during hottest hours, they use their phones, look ok, etc.
4. I was shown an educational movie about my rights (wage, passport, etc) before getting a work permit and electronic wage protection system will automatically FINE the employer if he decides not to pay. My understanding is that government cares a lot about reputation and actually tries to punish blatant exploitation.
5. UAE has paid sick leave, maternity leave, cheap health insurance, end-of-service payments which courts are actually enforce.
Fist off, you are absolutely correct on ICE. It is an abomination, and a grave sin on my country.
To the man issue, it is absolutely fascinating that folks are ok with corvee labor.
I am not surprised that people want jobs in UAE, mostly because life is hellish for the vast portion of the global south. That is not the issue.
Under Kafala, a sponsor (kafeel)—typically the employer—has significant control over the worker’s legal status, including their ability to change jobs, leave the country, or even access certain services. Workers often surrender their passports, and leaving an employer without permission can result in legal penalties. This creates conditions vulnerable to exploitation, debt bondage, and labor abuse, particularly for low-wage migrant workers in construction, domestic work, and service sectors.
H1B is the U.S. temporary work visa program for specialty occupations requiring specialized knowledge and a bachelor’s degree or higher. While visa holders are sponsored by and tied to specific employers, they have more mobility—they can change employers through visa transfers without permission from the bonded employer, though this requires the new employer to file paperwork. H1B workers retain their passports, can leave the country freely, and have legal recourse through U.S. labor and employment laws. There’s also a clear pathway to permanent residency (green card) that many pursue.
Both are exploitative, for certain.
In Dubai, the purpose of the program is to obtain the lowest cost labor possible. In H1B, The law requires employers to pay the higher of either the actual wage paid to similar workers or the “prevailing wage” for that occupation in that geographic area.
Obviously, H1Bs have issues - it can be difficult to find a subsequent sponsor, employers play games to lower salaries, but in Dubai the arbitrage is massive and literally supports the economy, in the us H1B is a rounding error.
85% of the population of Dubai is in or effectively Kafala.
0.18% of the population of the US is H1B
The US has had spectacular success with bringing in Somalis in Minneapolis and Haitians in Springfield. A transformational effect to bring new people who have energy and want to work, and are afforded the ability to own property and participate. This is the right model.
What one has to wonder is why so many people are ok with exploitation at the level of Dubai. The original sin of mankind wasn’t a f—king apple, it is the willingness to countenance a belief that some people are inherently superior to others.
That you think Somalian or Haitian immigration to the USA is even a slight success honestly is telling. They are overrepresented in rape, theft, scams and are a very large economic net drain. Such a class of immigrants should only ever be here on guest worker contracts rather than becoming a clannish crime/welfare class who also sexually harass women. In a state of equality such people are a drain. And you can only take in so many net drain individuals - Dubai can have a revolving door and give opportunity to more people.
They are also highly racist and ethnocentric - but align with the left because their ethnocentrism pegs mainstream America as the outgroup - the worst combination
To be more precise, I cannot prove that it doesn't happen, but I'm sure that it is not a widespread problem and laws are more protective of workers than in US
A legal guest worker in the US is required to be paid the same or more as an equivalent US citizen (obviously there are cheats, but in the range of 10-20% less). Professional expats (H1B equivalent) in Dubai are paid less than half of what citizens make.
Legal immigrants in the US make roughly equivalent wages because they are treated legally equally.
Illegal immigrants make 1/2 to 1/3 what low wage citizens make in the US. Kafala labor makes 1/40 to 1/50th.
All of this elides the fact that there are totally different legal systems for the emir, the citizens, and labor.
I don't have means to check the passport claim specifically, but I met a lot of let's say low-paid unskilled workers, and every one of them is flying to their home country once a year. Again, witholding passports and wages iis clearly illegal and definitely enforced. Labor courts and police are also very effective here (speaking from experience), so claim that 85% of workers don't have the passports, don't get wages, and cannot leave is false.
Tell me you never really studied Dubai and you're just sharing your intuitions, without telling me https://disruptive-horizons.com/p/the-9-lies-about-dubai
Amazingly, your article is even worse.
Any system that creates different sets of rights for employers and employed is wrong. Your article is a gross apology for a system that is essentially corrupt.
I don’t care about whether people can drink or wear bikinis. Different cultures, different rules. I do’t care if 2% or 80% of there revenue is from oil. Casting the withholding of passports as some combination of collateral or paternalism is gross and shameful. By your logic, organ sales would be reasonable provided the donor was paid and made money that could be sent home.
It is not a lie that Dubai, like Singapore, is a class system. It is not a lie that there are different sets of rules for the rulers, the rulesd, and the exploited. It is encoded into statute for all to see. It is not a lie that passports are withheld, restricting escape, and wages are also withheld, without equal access to the law. Defending exploitation by claiming “You should see how shitty it is for them in Pakistan” doesn’t change that it is exploitation.
That Dubai, for its wealth, provides zero care is grotesque. They benefit massively from immigration but pride themselves on providing no support.
I get it, you are a Milton Friedman/Randian. That is where the grotesqueness comes from.
Tell me you've never talked to a taxi driver in Dubai without telling me.
Seriously, where does your confidence come from that your opinion is correct? Have you really studied the subject? How much time have you spent in Dubai? How much time have you spent talking to the “oppressed” people?
Or are you just repeating things you've seen on the Internet, without taking the time to check them out for yourself?
Do yourself a favor : next time you are in Dubai, talk with all the taxi drivers you can. And to the waiters, workers, immigrants you see everywhere.
Ask them if they chose to come to Dubai voluntary, if people confiscated their passport, and why they are here.
Conservatives always use the taxi-driver trope:
Peggy Noonan, Michael Barone, Victor Davis Hanson, Salena Zito, Rod Liddle, Allister Heath, Melanie Phillips, James Delingpole, Tucker Carlson, Dennis Prager, Douglas Murray, Dinesh D’Souza, Mark Steyn, Theodore Dalrymple, Toby Young, Charles Moore, Daniel Hannan
All of them. It is the cheapest trick in the book. Economics is a system, as is politics. Systems of humans behave in predictable ways.
When you create a class system with differential outcomes based on class, you always get exploitation. Always.
I get it. You are Randian. But the Dubai system has multiple sets of rules, and such systems can reliably create “clean” and “safe” cities by consuming a underclass. It is not new.
I have traveled to about half of the countries of the world, studied political science, philosophy, and computer science, and have run companies and been on the boards of significant nonprofits.
I read actual books. With paper. Lots and lots of them.
Lose the taxi driver tripe. It is hackneyed and mildly embarrassing. Read Manuel Delanda.
Yeah. Your approach is far too top-down. You need to complement it with a little bottom-up. Just talk to the people.
I think you missed the point. I wasn’t lauding those writers.
As an aside, you do realize that you started both of your comments with the same structure, one miming Internet speak?
Just an observation.
Yeah, it's a tough question of whether it's right to let people come in and work and be treated much worse than your citizens, versus not letting them in and leaving them in thier own countries where thier situation is presumably even worse. On some level though, we're all taking advantage of cheap labor when we buy things from other countries, bringing in people to work for next to nothing just opens up more industries like construction
It is not tough.
They can have a guest work program that isn’t predatory. Collateralizing freedom to recoup state fees is predatory, and the state could repeal the fees or provide services to police and punish the companies holding the passports.
They do neither.
It is low taxes for the wealthy but punitive fees on labor.
Countries behave badly, and deeply stratified, absolutist countries behave abominably. We can’t fix the world, but lauding blatant exploitation is not reasonable.
Can they really do that? Every country I can think of which insists on treating their guest workers much more like natives also lets in very few immigrants. So in practice, it appears like it’s not politically possible to give opportunities to a large number of people unless you do not treat them the same as native people which is still better than treating them worse than native people by not even letting them into the country.
The question I am raising isn’t whether our economic system worldwide has serious issues. It is the idea of somehow lauding the Dubai system of low taxes and high service as a model when it is a totalitarian regime that cannot exist without creating an underclass 6x its size without meaningful (much less equivalent) human rights.
Of course exploitation will happen wherever there is power, just don’t act like you have created a magical model for governance.
I see. You're focusing on the stealing er confiscating passports, which yeah is pretty clearly bad. Absent that, I was just saying that you could argue every country exploits the cheap labor in other countries, whether through "guest workers" or goods made by sweatshops. It's hard to draw a line between giving people in other countries opportunities vs exploiting them.
That is absolutely true. There is no modern life as we know it without immiserating someone.
What makes me sick about this article is it is a hagiography for a particularly grievous kind of exploitation. Dubai would not exist in its current form without:
1. Resource extraction
2. Environmental degradation (they have significantly harmed their coast with those moronic reclamation projects, leading to lower water quality, silting up, etc.
3. Massive human exploitation. They are premier-level at human exploitation.
Of course, that is how India, China, the UK, and the US did it, so should we judge?
At the very least we shouldn’t pretend it was some miracle of management. Low taxes have to be compensated for.
Clearly you are someone who buys the western narrative of the middle east version of "slavery", people are happy to be in Dubai and they do have the option to come here or leave the country if it does not suit their needs. You should be ashamed of using your western version of morals to judge a country which is successful.
If success relies upon massive class distinction, it is not laudable. This is not easy or west.
40:1 wages is not justifiable.
Treating everything contactable as ethical is being not ethical. If someone willingly sells their organs because they need the money, is that ethical? Should we allow people to sell their future earnings to get education? Should we re-introduce debtors prisons or indentures?
Of course not, because contract-ability is not justification, and desperation does not provide ethical cover, except to sociopaths.
Casting it as east-west is tendentious.
All someone has to do is to look for Dubai Chocolate before it became edible.
Well done, Tomas. It's rare to see such a nuanced article about Dubai, especially from someone who hasn't lived there.
You've perfectly understood Dubai's (very clever) positioning in this new world.
May I suggest my article "Why I Feel Freer in a Monarchy Than in My Democratic Home Country -
Reflections on Dubai and the freedom granted by digital nomadism" https://disruptive-horizons.com/p/why-i-feel-freer-in-a-monarchy as a supplement? I lived in Dubai for seven years and know the city very well.
Also, to summarize one of my points about what gives Dubai such a feeling of freedom:
"For several years, I haven’t needed to show a passport at Dubai airport: facial recognition identifies me and the gate opens automatically. It’s efficient—but it also shows how easily governments can track people. In Dubai, cameras are everywhere and actively used by police; finding a stolen car is trivial. If you can track cars, you can track individuals.
The UAE clearly offers fewer political freedoms than Western democracies, so yes—mass surveillance bothers me. But, paradoxically, less than it would in my home country.
Why? Two reasons. First, the balance of power is different. There’s a distinct implicit contract between someone born into a country and someone who chooses a country in a competitive market of jurisdictions. The mono-country person is constrained by inertia—language, ties, habits—and feels the state’s weight acutely. The nomad arrives as a customer. If the value deteriorates or surveillance becomes too heavy, he can—and should—leave.
That possibility fundamentally rebalances power. I can choose where to live and contribute, and states must compete to keep me. So I know that if Dubai no longer suits me, I’ll leave. Accepting slightly more state power is the trade-off for having strong exit power. In practice, voting with your feet balances power better than voting at the ballot box—an essential insight when choosing your first expatriate country."
(I share the 2nd reason in the above article)
So we agree on this point.
Thank you. Yes, great add.
And I’m dumb I should have asked you to look at the article before publishing 😅
Tomas - Very insightful piece on Dubai's history and regulatory evolution as a trading hub (especially the early quasi-SEZ policy leading to certain institutional and cultural attitudes preventing the trap of the rentier state - quintessential example of historical path dependence).
But in all honesty, I think a big blind spot here is your article not grappling with the UAE's external political economy. The same trade and financial infrastructure that enabled Dubai's rise is deployed to bankroll and shield actors that destabilize the region while reinforcing the UAE's positioning in trade flows. You can't have a conversation about Dubai or the UAE without considering their support for the RSF in Sudan (orchestrating the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe) and Haftar's campaign in Libya.
Dubai's isn't some neat and neutral "anti-petrostate" success story. It's part of a broader Emirati model combining hyper-efficient internal order with outsourced genocide and chaos abroad. Sure, we can admire the internal governance mechanics but still need to ask whether this is sustainable after taking into account the externalities.
I would also be extremely hesitant to characterize Dubai as a symbol of "modern Islam". Most Muslims of cosmopolitan sensibilities around the world see little overlap between Quranic ideals of industrious austerity or consensus-based bottoms-up governance (with nothing holy except God) vs Dubai's opulent hyper-consumption and top-down heavy-handedness - treating its state apparatus as divine itself.
My hypothesis is that most of what you’re saying here relates to Abu Dhabi’s role, as it does have a ton of oil, which it uses for some of the things you mention.
I’m not sure I’d use your definition for “modern Muslim”, but your opinion is valid, I don’t have data supporting my position either there.
Very interesting, thanks (if a tad too rose tinted glasses).
I do find the land reclamation projects hilariously wasteful, though, as Dubai has plentiful flat, stable land immediately inland for development with no environmental concerns whatsoever (even if the Emiratis cared).
Yes, but it’s not beachfront!
Fair enough!
I think this piece on Dubai is incomplete without telling about some of the fundamental flaws the country has.
The history on how it became a freestate for trading and investment is interesting and explains to a great extent the wealth that is amassed in the place though.
I like reading your articles a lot. Not because I alway agree with you but because I think you are an original thinker, can combine multiple disciplines and do a lot of reasoning based on first principles. This one is not up to standards though
There is plenty to criticize about Dubai, but this article is not just about Dubai. This article is about the lessons it can teach us about the world. And I think all of them are quite positive. If this article had been about Yemen, or Abu Dhabi, or Saudi Arabia, it would be different (as you’ll soon see).
This reads in parts like a paid advert for Dubai, which it may well be.
Part of your conclusion stood out to me, and it almost read like irony.
"A Muslim monarchy can be tolerant, welcoming, rich, dynamic, and cosmopolitan."
Dubai may be welcoming, rich, dynamic, and cosmopolitan, but tolerant it is not. It's actually famously authoritarian, and has zero tolerance for political dissent or criticism of the government, criminalises LGBTQ+ relationships, strictly censors media and speech, and systemically exploits migrant workers, among other intolerant policies and norms.
In case this is not clear, this is not a paid advertising.
Funnily, nobody has accused me of such things when I write articles about, say, the U.S.
when I have a conflict of interest, I disclose it.
People misunderstand tolerance. A key tenet is that we should tolerant of everything but intolerance.
This is not something the West has done well.
Dubai has chosen a path where it says: I won’t force anybody to be here. But if you are hear, just don’t criticize the government in a way that could threaten it. That sounds to me like an acceptable choice. If you don’t want to be there, it don’t be there. Vote with your feet.
The groups you mention are welcome to be there as long as they don’t rock the boat publicly. When they do, they are not imprisoned, they’re extradited.
If it’s not for you, just don’t go there. I think that’s quite fair.
It’s definitely much fairer than any other place in the Middle East, bar Israel.
It would be nice if you put a conflict of interest declaration in this piece (even if it to say you have no conflict of interest)
That’s an interesting idea.
The default is to not put anything because there’s virtually never one. I think that makes sense?
Well your work is quite academic (high compliment), and conflicts of interest are a standard in academic works.
edit: lots of news sources as well use them, for instance WSJ discusses its parent company whenever it is relevant to a news story
What I was thinking too. Thomas’s articles are usually much more balanced.
Sure but America and Europe are doing the same as we speak, you can point l fingers at other places but you have to acknowledge that at the moment you can’t have free speech or criticize Govs in the Uk, the U.S ..etc
In America citizens are arrested based on how they look right not and God forbid you criticize that one colonial project in the Middle East who’s murdering children by the thousands. I’m not from Dubai nor do I care about it but we have to be fair about our criticism.
The UK is different story than the US when it comes to freedom of speech. Many places in Europe limit it.
As of now, it’s all the same. You can’t say many things in the U.S
How does it "exploit" workers? If passports are with held so they can't leave, fair comment, but that's happening with trafficking gangs in the west too.
If you just mean "they get paid less than I would like and they have to work hard" - well they can go home. Obviously they've decided the conditions are better in Dubai than wherever they came from.
Given that there's 4.5m people and most are foreign, it seems unlikely that the vast majority aren't there voluntarily
Huh, oil was a smaller part of the Dubai story than I thought. It seems like this might be a major blind spot about Dubai for almost everybody.
I’m surprised there is no mention at all about Dubai’s - well known - reputation as a money‑laundering hub, especially in relation to its real‑estate market and free‑trade zones.
The very mechanisms that facilitate massive foreign investment (tax‑free policies, free zones, luxury real‑estate, etc) have also attracted the money‑laundering which for a large part is fueling Dubai’s construction boom.
And not to speak even of the UAE’s - to put it mildly - dubious role in the genocide in Sudan and the gold it imports from there.
Transparency International : Dubai is a “money‑laundering paradise,” the emirate’s open economy and lax oversight make it attractive to corrupt and criminal actors from around the world.
Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/01/29/dubai-has-become-a-money-laundering-paradise-says-anti-corruption-group/
Investigations by NGOs (e.g., OCF Report, AMlNetwork) point to systematic weaknesses in anti‑money‑laundering (AML) controls, especially in property transactions where opaque ownership structures allow large sums of illicit cash to be integrated into the economy.
AML Network: https://amlnetwork.org/high-risk-sectors/dubai-real-estate-hub-for-money-laundering-and-aml-failures/
Transparency International: https://www.transparency.org/en/news/money-laundering-list-exit-uae-much-to-prove
Yes very interesting topic. Is it geopolitically relevant?
I’d be hard to argue it isn’t highly relevant geopolitically. When large volumes of illicit capital flow into a country’s real‑estate market and free‑trade zones, it does more than just boost construction. It reshapes the economic landscape in ways that can alter political influence and strategic interests (beyond that country’s borders).
Wealthy individuals that evade scrutiny can acquire high‑profile assets, gaining social and political clout that may translate into lobbying power or informal influence over policy decisions.
And on top of that it enables those to continue their illicit activities, which can have an effect far beyond where those activities occur or where the money is laundered.
Furthermore illicit funds can be funneled to groups or regimes that are at odds with international norms, potentially financing activities that destabilise neighbouring regions (e.g. the links to the genocide in Sudan).
And then I haven’t mentioned how the reputation of a country can be damaged by money laundering. And that will affect how other countries interact with said country.
Great and concise article. I knew about the Dubai skyline and attempts to diversify from oil, but I would've guessed it was still 40-50% of its economic output. One is always learning when reading Uncharted Territories!
Just a note on your comment about what "a Muslim monarchy" can be. Vague recollections from the Arab Spring period of commentaries that the monarchies were far more stable and/or tolerant than the republics (Egypt/Syria/Iraq/Iran/Yemen/Libya). The monarchs weathered the 2010s far better than the non-monarchs.
Enjoyed that. Nice demonstration of the resource paradox - the general assumption would be that the adjacent oil rich cities would do better but extractive industries often breed complacency. Those that have to create often end up generating far more value.
There's clearly lessons for other states too - most notably that under the radar, focused improvement combined with broadly free economics is a strong recipe for prosperity.
Spot on
the "my grandfather rode a camel, my grandson will too" quote hits different when you realize dubai's entire strategy was speed. they knew the oil wouldn't last, so they used it as leverage to build infrastructure now instead of extracting rents forever. most countries with resource windfalls do the opposite – optimize for immediate consumption, assume the good times last. curious if this works anywhere outside city-states though.
Norway
But it’s very rare. And Norway is a very developed country. The level of wisdom and vision is astounding.
Dubai: "the UAE is not known for freedom. Criticism of rulers, state institutions, religion, or “social harmony” can lead to detention. Online speech, including social media posts, is closely monitored. ... Public morality laws affect dress, alcohol, relationships."
US: "(M)y speech was not much more free in (San Francisco), as I always had to be very conscious of what I said and how it would land with people, for fear of making a faux pas or hurting sensitivities."
These aren't even *remotely* equivocable.
I'd rather live somewhere like the U.S. or Western Europe, where I am free to hurt someone's sensitive feelings or make a mild faux pas, and then walk away (or maybe get called a name)... than somewhere like Dubai or Russia or Thailand, where I accidentally say something offhand and wind up being detained in prison for not falling in line with the Monarch or Tyrant.
Plus, regardless of how "smart" its leaders were, ultimately, what does Dubai have? Dubai has...money. The flimsiest of non-physical, volatile resources. It is a city-sized combination of the worst of Las Vegas and Zürich, with zero actual real resources or natural wealth. And all of its construction and outward sign of monetary wealth is currently built on the backs of imported slave labor.
Dubai is a playground for the rich, and holds little else for anyone lower than the upper 10-20%. (3)(4)
And unlike the U.S., the Gilded Age in Dubai has nowhere to exhale. The U.S. suffered through a Gild-smashing Great Depression, but used its wealth of natural resources to manufacture its way out of the hole.
One major global downturn, one Great Depression, and Dubai is toast.
However, the U.S., as you mentioned in a previous article (1), has a glut of natural resources to rely on for wealth, and though it has major labor inequalities, the vast majority of construction is not performed by essentially slave laborers, but by paid employees with actual labor laws.
One major global downturn, one Great Depression, and the U.S. is...badly injured, but recoverable.
Sadly, rather than explaining any deep-seated virtues of Dubai, and why it is misunderstood by xenophobes and jingoists, this article read as a Libertarian's dream pamphlet, created by the Dubai "Ministry of Truth" for those who's sole goal in life is to worship the accumulation of money, regardless of its impact on other humans.
To be blunt: After reading your article, I find Dubai to be even more reprehensible against the decency of humanity, that I did *before* reading it.
My only question is if "on a bright cold day in April", the diamond-encrusted clocks "strike thirteen" ...? (2)
(1) https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/never-bet-against-america
(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four
(3) https://spheresofinfluence.ca/dubai-migrant-workers-expats/
(4) https://medium.com/@crystalcoopercollard/dubais-class-divide-2b8bc93c5274
There is something rather insidious in the way Dubai is "tolerant". It deliberately puts you at the mercy of the rulers. You are incentivised to be a law breaker under the guise of live and let live but this forever makes you a criminal that is not prosecuted. At any point you can be treated as a criminal if that is to the benefit of someone. This is arguably morally much more reprehensible then a state with strict laws that enforces them as this makes the rule of law arbitrary and thereby undermines it. They just make sure they don't have too many victims so people turn a blind eye but there are many examples of people that got screwed over.
Strangely no mention of Dubais migrant workers, who built all those shiny malls and towers but have few rights and routinely suffer abuse and extortion from employers. That’s the other side of the freedom vs ‘comfort’ tradeoff you mentioned.
"While Western media is filled with stories of intolerant, aggressive, backward-looking Islam, Dubai shows that this narrative doesn’t need to prevail. A Muslim monarchy can be tolerant, welcoming, rich, dynamic, and cosmopolitan."
As long as you don't happen to be LGBT+, anyway.
All PDAs are unwelcome in Dubai. My understanding is if you do stuff in your own private sphere, nobody is going to bother you. From what I’ve read, those who break these rules are deported, not imprisoned.
Do I wish there was more freedom? Yes. Is the above deal a reasonable one for a Muslim country? I think so.