> Sorry. But after reading that article, I just don't believe your personal ...

gnosis · on Nov 30, 2009

  > > 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...

"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 · on Dec 1, 2009

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 · on Dec 1, 2009

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.