
The dark side of Dubai - gnosis
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
======
yesimahuman
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>

~~~
gms
Although your comment is extreme, many people moved there to make lots of
money and live like kings. Which they did.

Edit: Not sure why I'm being downmodded; all I did was answer the parent's
question.

~~~
brown9-2
They moved to Dubai to participate (willingly or unwillingly) in a bubble,
basically.

~~~
gms
Is that a bad thing (on a per-person level)? Again, many people made out
great.

~~~
brown9-2
Well I guess that comes down to a moral choice.

Would you be okay with "making out great" and becoming rich if it meant that
other people had to work in 130 degree heat for 18 hours a day in order to
build the buildings you live and work in, and had their wages withheld and
passport confiscated by their employer?

Would you think that you had made a bad choice?

~~~
gms
That is exactly the question I am asking. If someone gave you (and I don't
mean you in particular) the chance to make all this money with minimal effort
on your part, are you so sure you'd turn it down?

To answer this question regarding myself, I don't know. For example, I wear
clothes and shoes that are obviously made using horrible labour in third-world
countries. Also, what are the people who already live there supposed to do?
Halt their lives and livelihoods and move out?

All I'm calling for with my comments is more restraint when it comes to the
'holier than thou' comments. It's too easy to express casual outrage and
condemnation on the internet.

~~~
pyre
No offense, but the conditions that these workers are in seem _a lot_ worse
than anything you could have inside a factory in China.

------
brown9-2
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.

~~~
pyre
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
The mafia will just kill you. That makes even less sense since they have to
spend money on a hitman.

~~~
pyre
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.

------
lionhearted
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.

~~~
gnosis
Sorry. But after reading that article, I just don't believe your personal
experience is indicative of what's going on in Dubai. You're the one who
sounds out of touch.

Have you even gone to interview the workers slaving away to do construction on
Dubai's skyscrapers as the author of this article did? Have you seen where
they live? Did you interview any of the people who had their passports taken
away?

This was a throughly researched article, while your experience amounts to just
your friend's project management firm and an acquaintance's girlfriend. Maybe
project managers have it good in Dubai, but how does their experience compare
to the rest of Dubai's workforce?

And what about the water quality problems they're having after dumping their
sewage in the sea? What about the lack of freedom of speech addressed in the
article? Or the fact that being gay in Dubai is illegal? Or the threats of
Islamic radicalism? Or the impact of the falling oil prices and Dubai's debt
economy?

There's so much in this article you seem to dismiss with a wave of the hand by
saying other countries have their problems too. They certainly do, but that
doesn't excuse or explain what's going on in Dubai.

~~~
lionhearted
> Sorry. But after reading that article, I just don't believe your personal
> experience is indicative of what's going on in Dubai. You're the one who
> sounds out of touch.

I want to put this down in a way to further the conversation. "But after
reading that article, I just don't believe..." - that statement. You read a
news article - I've read many too - and you feel educated enough to make a
judgment on my personal experiences including very upper class people, Western
skilled workers, and some poor people who were maids, sanitation people, etc.
After reading a news article, you feel confident to make a judgment that
someone else's firsthand experiences are not indicative of how things actually
are, and that the person is out of touch.

> There's so much in this article you seem to dismiss with a wave of the hand
> by saying other countries have their problems too.

No. That's not it at all.

I don't think people realize how bad poverty is. So when you read that someone
worked 12 hours in terrible conditions for $800/month, that sounds incredibly
horrible. But people don't realize that when a meal at a cafe costs 22 cents,
a bus ride costs 11 cents, a giant bag of rice costs less than a dollar -
well, then $800 goes a long way. I've spent time in third world countries.
Most people who get righteous when a story likes this comes out, haven't. $800
goes a long way in the third world.

Some people pulled themselves out of poverty by working in Dubai. I'm not
talking about the up and up people. Some poor people pulled themselves out of
poverty in Dubai. Bad things also happened there, but good things happened
too. That doesn't dismiss some terrible things, but the article ignores some
people who literally turned their lives around there.

~~~
gnosis

      > > Sorry. But after reading that article, I just don't believe your
      > > personal experience is  indicative of what's going  on in Dubai.
      > > You're the one who sounds out of touch.
      >
      > I want to put this down in a way to further the conversation. "But
      > after  reading  that article,  I  just  don't believe..."  -  that
      > statement. You read a news article -  I've read many too - and you
      > feel educated enough to make a judgment on my personal experiences
      > including very  upper class  people, Western skilled  workers, and
      > some poor  people who  were maids,  sanitation people,  etc. After
      > reading a news article, you feel confident to make a judgment that
      > someone  else's firsthand  experiences are  not indicative  of how
      > things actually are, and that the person is out of touch.
    

It was more a judgement of your description of your personal experience than
the experience itself. Clearly, no one has access to your personal experience,
so they can't judge it directly. But we can judge what you tell us (compared
to what the author of "The dark side of Dubai" article tells about his
personal experience).

    
    
      > > Have you  even gone to  interview the  workers slaving away  to do
      > > construction on Dubai's skyscrapers as  the author of this article
      > > did?
      >
      > Yes.
      >
      > > Have you seen where they live?
      >
      > Yes.
    

Then why didn't you mention it? Why did you start going off about how good
project managers and stewardeses have it in Dubai instead of talking about the
people interviewed in the article: the workers slaving away building the
skyscrapers and the people who've had their passports taken away? Do you
dispute the accuracy of what the author of the article has written about them?

    
    
      > I  don't think  people realize  how bad  poverty is.  So when  you
      > read  that someone  worked  12 hours  in  terrible conditions  for
      > $800/month,  that sounds  incredibly  horrible.  But people  don't
      > realize that  when a meal  at a cafe costs  11 cents, $800  goes a
      > long way.  I've spent time  in third world countries.  Most people
      > who get righteous when a story likes this comes out, haven't. $800
      > goes a long way in the third world.
    

First, the article mentioned people were making £90 ($147) a month, not $800 a
month. Second, Dubai is not a third world country, so I really doubt the
workers are spending 11 cents a meal. According to
[http://www.expatforum.com/articles/cost-of-living/cost-of-
li...](http://www.expatforum.com/articles/cost-of-living/cost-of-living-in-
dubai.html)

 _"An individual expatriate will spend around 500 euro on food and other
grocery items every month. Costs of food products are especially high... Water
is generally expensive all across the country... Dubai relies mostly on
imported food and drinks, which explains why they are also more expensive."_

The monthly cost of food of 500 Euro is about $750, more than 5 times the
monthly wage mentioned in the article. Of course, the typical slave worker
probably isn't going to be eating food that's as expensive as that of your
typical Western expat, but I doubt they'd survive on $10 of food a month,
which is what three 11 cent meals a day totaled over a month would amount to.

Then there's the debt that the slave workers get in to to just have the
opportunity to work in Dubai. The article quotes it as £2,300 ($3,772), which
would take 25 months to work off at the $147 per month salary, if we don't
count the cost of living in Dubai (which would make repaying the debt even
harder).

Finally, there are the dangerous work conditions, physical violence, and the
non-payment and delay of salaries that the article mentions, which would
literally put the workers' lives in jeopardy. That doesn't exactly sound like
the opportunity of a lifetime, even for someone coming from the third world.

    
    
      > Some people pulled themselves out  of poverty by working in Dubai.
      > I'm  not talking  about the  up and  up people.  Some poor  people
      > pulled  themselves  out  of  poverty in  Dubai.  Bad  things  also
      > happened there, but good things happened too. That doesn't dismiss
      > some  terrible things,  but the  article ignores  some people  who
      > literally turned their lives around there.
    

There will always be exceptional people who can overcome some of the worst
adversities. This article wasn't about them. That's true. The author chose to
mostly focus on the less exceptional, and more representative people in Dubai,
and nothing you've said has proven the author of this article did anything
less than a stellar job at researching and describing his chosen subject.

~~~
lionhearted
I understand where you're at and I respect it - bad things happened in Dubai
and should be addressed. When I came in and commented, there were lots of
sentiment against Dubai. Heck, there's "Fuck Dubai" comment at +12 right now.
So I knew pretty well that if I offered a perspective that the article isn't
representative of everything happening there, there's a good chance it
wouldn't be well-received. The reception's actually been a little more
positive than I imagined it would be.

So why do I write it? Well, after traveling a lot of the world, I don't think
it's so simple and black and white. Some horrific stuff happened in Dubai?
Yes. Mark it down. Don't forget it. Work to change it. But does that make the
place completely morally bankrupt? I don't believe so. A lot of lives have
been saved and aided greatly there. This is of course not simple, black and
white, with us or against us, good or evil type thinking. Bad stuff happened
there. Good stuff happened there. The article didn't mention any good stuff
and made it seem like it was all really bad stuff. So I offered my own
experiences.

But is there bad stuff there? Oh yeah. And let's not forget that. Someone gets
promised a 500 euro salary, then gets paid only 90 euros? Wow, that's criminal
and sickening. The people that did that should have very bad things happen to
them. But yet, I'll still write in that I know firsthand people who had their
lives changed their, including unskilled laborers that made a hell of a lot of
money. I've done a bit of blue collar manual labor in my life. It's not
enjoyable, it's hard, but it pays very well for unskilled labor. There was
some of that happening in Dubai, and it offered a lot of opportunities that
helped a lot of people.

I knew a girl and her sister who were Sri Lanka, whose parents came to Dubai
as basically house servants. I'm not sure what the father did - maybe
landscaping? - the mother was a maid. But their daughters were able to go to
decent schools and were on their way out of poverty. There's stories like that
too. The article paints Dubai as a hell hole filled with callous people,
blinded to human suffering by their own greed. Yes there were bad things
there, that ought to be changed. But the world is not simple, black and white,
good and evil, with us or against us. A lot of good happened there too.

You seem like a nice and considerate person, and I think you and I are
fundamentally on the same page. I came in to voice an opinion that seemed like
it would be unpopular, because it seemed worth it for people to think about.
Cheers and thanks for having a conversation with me.

~~~
asher
Thank you, Lionhearted, for gently bringing some maturity and perspective to
this thread. Dubai is an amazing and special place, not to be dismissed
lightly and put into some prefab category.

A friend is working there now. He loves Dubai because it rewards hard work. He
finds the pace faster than in the US. More buildings going up, more vision,
more investment, and less red tape.

I hope that whatever economic problems Dubai has will soon be resolved. And I
trust that over time Dubai will solve some of the problems which annoyed this
author.

------
moo
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....](http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/09/uae.torture/index.html)

Edit: Wikipedia shows that sheikh can be an honorific Arab term and I meant a
royal or monarch.

------
physcab
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=550719>

------
zandorg
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-
dese...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/29/dubai-world-desert-gulf-
investors)

~~~
gnosis
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
Please note the context of self-deprecation that accompanies the quote about
the tips. The writer is admitting to his own frivolity here.

~~~
gnosis
Duly noted, as are his attempts to trivialize the plight of the slaves upon
who's backs Dubai was built.

------
Aegean
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
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
Hopefully this poetic justice will engulf the Web 2.0 startup economy too.

------
yangyang
This is from April, btw.

~~~
TrevorBramble
As someone who read it in April, I'm glad it's still being shared.

~~~
jpcx01
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?

------
chrischen
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.

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

------
kazuya
Joi Ito has another view on this:

<http://joi.ito.com/weblog/2009/04/15/followup-to-my.html>

------
hristov
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
There's a balance. Too few protections or too many are destabilizing.

------
occam
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. "

------
known
I heard Arab nations treat _non-muslims_ as _non-humans_

------
modelic3
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
What the hell man? What's with the downvotes.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Economics is not physics, and quality of life is not a zero sum game.

~~~
modelic3
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.

