The dark side of Dubai

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html

by gnosis • 17 years ago

103 66 17 years ago

independent.co.uk

yangyang• 17 years ago

This is from April, btw.

TrevorBramble• 17 years ago

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

jpcx01• 17 years ago

Agreed, but I'd like to see it brought up to date with the current financial crises. I wonder if things are better or worse now that all projects are brought to a hold, these real estate companies are going bankrupt. Will they allow these immigrants to return to their homes, or continue to enforce the debts of passage?

yesimahuman2• 17 years ago

Why anyone would relocate to a country living in the dark ages with Medieval laws is beyond me. Commit adultry? Go to prison. Eat a poppy-seed bagel in another airport on your way to Dubai and leave a seed on your shirt? Same thing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7234786.stm

gms3• 17 years ago

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.

yesimahuman2• 17 years ago

My comment wasn't extreme. The fact that that kind of stuff happened at all is what's extreme.

brown9-24• 17 years ago

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

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

Fuck Dubai. No flashy tourist attraction is worth that kind of risk.

zemaj• 17 years ago

That's unfair. Thanks to terrorism the US & most western countries now laws that can decimate your privacy & can hold you in prison with little to no evidence. We put up with it because we know that by the numbers there's little chance of it affecting us as individuals. The same goes for Dubai. Even those laws exist, you're unlikely to be affected by them and most of the time the police look the other way even if you do get caught by one of the ridiculous laws.

Frazzydee• 17 years ago

Simple: There's money involved, and nobody thinks any of that will happen to them.

chrischen2• 17 years ago

What I can't comprehend is how can any wealthy hard working person who truly worked their way up, from the first-world, can go there, enjoy it, and ignore-it-all.

In my opinion all those people that enjoy it and knowingly ignore are just as guilty. They contribute to the slavery and condone the policies.

UPDATE: after reading the entire article, I'd have to say this comment sums it up: "All the people who couldn't succeed in their own countries end up here, and suddenly they're rich and promoted way above their abilities and bragging about how great they are. I've never met so many incompetent people in such senior positions anywhere in the world." She adds: "It's absolutely racist. I had Filipino girls working for me doing the same job as a European girl, and she's paid a quarter of the wages. The people who do the real work are paid next to nothing, while these incompetent managers pay themselves £40,000 a month."

If this is true, then I'd accuse these people for truly building what we see as Dubai.

And the point about globalization makes all of us in first-world countries just as guilty.

brown9-24• 17 years ago

The more I read about Dubai's "debt is illegal" policy, the more counter-productive it seems.

If you lose your job, the employer has to notify the bank. The bank freezes your accounts and you are prevented from leaving the country. Thus, you are left with absolutely zero way to ever pay off your debt.

What's the proper economics term for this? Something along the lines of a self-fulfilling negative spiral.

jhancock3• 17 years ago

It certainly seems short sited. I think a good part of the secret sauce for the U.S. is that we allow people/businesses to fail (bankruptcy).

heyitsnick• 17 years ago

I'm not sure how secret that sauce is. Declaring bankruptcy in one form or another is common throughout the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankrupcy#In_individual_countri...

pyre5• 17 years ago

Europe did it back in the day. If you were a debtor you were thrown in debtors' prison until you paid off your debt... but you can't earn any money while you are in debtors' prison... Catch-22. I'm assuming that it's meant as a deterrent to try and prevent people from getting into debt in the first place. Not that it's a very good (or humane) idea though.

philwelch• 17 years ago

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

physcab• 17 years ago

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

lionhearted4• 17 years ago

I've spent a bit of time in Dubai. It's not quite what the author makes it out to be.

I've heard about the abuses - there are some and it's horrible - but it's not indicative of the way most people are running their businesses in Dubai.

A mentor of mine from England headed up a project management firm there. The workers under him made 20-40 times what they could make back home in South Asia, in places where the malnourishment/literally-starving-to-death rate is sometimes 30%.

An acquaintance of mine who worked in Dubai had a Chinese girlfriend who was a stewardess on Emirates Airlines. Emirates is pretty incredible in that they pay the same amounts to their staff regardless of country of origin - almost all airlines and cruiselines pay much less to people from China, the Philippines, etc, than they would to someone from France or Australia. Emirates pays everyone the same. The acquaintence's Chinese girlfriend bought one house every couple months back in her home province in China on her wages. Her family was becoming incredibly wealthy.

A company taking someone's passport and changing their contract is really horrible fraud, a horrific crime. But that's an indictment of the whole society - this kind of nonsense happens in the West too. Take South Korea and the United States - a common story is a girl gets promised high paid waitressing/hostessing job, gets sold into slavery. This is a terrible thing, and should be stopped - but does that mean that United States is running on slave labor? No. A few bad people is not an indictment of an entire society.

For a lot of very poor people, Dubai helped pull their families out of poverty. The did some amazing things there. Those things won't be mentioned in a piece like this. People who would be living on subsistence farming in China build houses and manage property after working in Dubai. People from Sri Lanka, India, and Eastern Europe can support their whole families and save money after working there for a couple years, in places where there is no opportunity and everyone is literally starving to death.

The author doesn't care about the good. The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story. There's some bad stuff there? Oh yeah, absolutely. There's bad stuff in the USA too. And England. And everywhere. There's also a hell of a lot of good that's happening there, that wasn't mentioned.

brown9-24• 17 years ago

The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story.

I'm not sure how you can make this claim. Do you have knowledge of the chronology of the author's events as to when she wrote the article and when she performed the numerous interviews - with both sides - in the article?

The author doesn't care about the good.

I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud. That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".

lionhearted4• 17 years ago

> I think that the author's point is that there is no good if the country/economy/system is built on the back of what amounts to slavery and fraud.

I don't mean the big buildings - I mean the author doesn't mention all the good that happened for a lot of workers that came to Dubai with no other options, were treated relatively did well, did hard work but were paid extremely well for it, and went from being poor to being upper middle class in their home countries after their tenure was over.

> That it doesn't matter how much "good" has been done if these abuses took place as a part of manufacturing the "good".

The author didn't make an attempt to get the average wages, or how the process works on average, or how widespread any abuses are. She didn't publish anyone's account who came out well in Dubai, and there's many. She didn't write about the people who, by working in Dubai for a couple years, made enough to live very well in their home countries, buy property, send their kids to good schools, and get their families out of poverty. That happened too. That's the good I was referring to.

gnosis8• 17 years ago

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.

lionhearted4• 17 years ago

> 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.

tptacek• 17 years ago

We already have the article, gnosis. This person has actual experience. His comments add to the discussion, over and above the article. No matter what I think of Dubai or the journalism in this article (respectively: BAD and GOOD, FWIW), you're not contributing much here.

DannoHung• 17 years ago

The measurement of "some" is always important. The degree to which it's passed off as "just the way things are" is also important.

The exact nature of "good" is also worth considering. People getting boned over in the name of curing cancer is different than people getting boned over in the name of acquiring real estate or building luxury homes on artificial islands that will collapse into the sea in two decades.

pyre5• 17 years ago

> 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.

The government seems to be complicit in these abuses, so it's a good idea to support the government just because there are some people not committing abuses?

> 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%.

So... because some people are making a lot of money it's ok for others to suffer... ? Does what your mentor does/did in Dubai somehow negate what is happening to these other workers?

> 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.

If the wealth of Dubai is build upon the backs of slave-labor, then she is raising her family out of poverty with 'blood money.' She is knocking others down in an attempt to lift herself up, though indirectly.

> 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.

It is if the society decides to ignore it. It's not necessarily what happens in a society that should define it, but how a society reacts to these events. If this 'nonesense' is happening, and the people in Dubai are happy to turn the other way and pretend it doesn't exist, is this somehow acceptable behavior? I'm sure there are plenty of people there that are willing to ignore such abuses because they are making so much money.

> 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.

How common is this though? Point me to data/articles/etc on this practice. I somehow think that these South Korean slaves are being sent into the 'sex trade' or becoming 'slave maids.' While this is nothing that should be ignored you would have a hard time making the case the a society is 'built' or 'based on' sex workers or maids (as opposed to maintenance/construction workers).

> 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.

I've already mentioned it, but it bears mentioning again. If this wealth is built on the backs of slaves, these people are (indirectly) throwing others under the bus in an attempt to improve their lot in life.

> The author doesn't care about the good.

I think that the point is that the good needs to out-weigh the bad. If 1 in 5 people coming from poverty in a 3rd world country 'hit it big' in Dubai while 4 in 5 people end up in deplorable working conditions with no chance of escape, is there really a point to mentioning that there is 'some good' happening?

> The opinion piece was written before doing any research or interviews, the research and interviews were set to tell the story.

You have no evidence for this, and at this point you're just making baseless accusations as a way to somehow bolster the point that you're trying to drive home. Please don't try to back up your argument by making unfounded statements.

No offense, but you're also failing to realize that you're railing on an 'opinion' piece while offering in return nothing but your own opinion based on anecdotal evidence. You can't use your own anecdotal evidence to disprove someone else's anecdotal evidence except in specific cases (i.e. you went to the same 'slave worker' camp at around the same time but the conditions were vastly different).

> There's some bad stuff there? Oh yeah, absolutely. There's bad stuff in the USA too

No offense, but from the description of the working/living conditions of these people, illegal Mexican immigration workers in th USA that are held 'captive' by their employers have it good.

raganwald• 17 years ago

almost all airlines and cruiselines pay much less to people from China, the Philippines, etc, than they would to someone from France or Australia.

That surprises me. That isn't how it works for any of the airlines flying out of Canada, that is illegal here. The US has much more relaxed laws than we do, and a number of issues with respect to African Americans, but I'd be more than a little surprised if that was standard practice there.

What about European airlines like those flying out of England or Germany. Do they pay less to Chinese flight attendants? My guess would be that if they were legally able to work they would receive the same pay in countries like Germany and England. Am I mistaken?

I'm curious.

astrec• 17 years ago

Here's how it works (roughly):

  AU based airline flies route between SYD and BKK.
  Airline reduces capacity of SYD crew base.
  Airline declares BKK a crew base.
  Airline pays BKK cabin crew local rates.
  BKK cabin crew staff SYD->BKK->SYD flights.
  Profit.

hristov• 17 years ago

While these are truly horrible stories, it has to be noted that you cannot just explain them with some racist reference to arabs. This is just the logical conclusion of certain free market policies without regard for human rights and human well being.

In fact for every horrible story you read about in this article there is a politician in the US trying to bring that story to America. If you enact tort reform, reform the bankruptcy laws, remove worker protections and minimum wage laws, and remove environmental regulations, you will get exactly the same type of outcome as you are getting in Dubai.

ams6110• 17 years ago

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

zandorg• 17 years ago

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

gnosis8• 17 years ago

It's good to hear a different view from someone with a "yachtsman friend", who appreciates the "affordable domestic help" in Dubai, and "salves his conscience by giving a bigger tip to the Asian waiter or Indian taxi driver".

nate_meurer• 17 years ago

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

Aegean• 17 years ago

This is no surprise. If you build a whole investment empire based solely on the value of housing, those cheap bricks you build turn against you one day.

No social investments, no technology, just plain luxury and housing. Have you seen that artificial palm drawn on the sea? For me, that symbolizes how artificial things were in Dubai, and good old karma gave them what they deserved.

potatolicious2• 17 years ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one feeling schadenfreude at Dubai's current predicament. I, at least, feel vindicated that good old common sense appears to have trumped wild disconnection from reality caused by wealth.

More proof that no country can survive without producing any of tangible value.

abalashov• 17 years ago

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

moo• 17 years ago

What about that Abu Dhabi story about a Sheikh Issa torturing a grain merchant on tape. I'll stay out of countries ruled by royals. http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/09/uae.torture/index....

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

chrischen2• 17 years ago

I believe I saw a documentary or special on Discovery (I think) about the building of the Burj Al Arab. They hired in a fancy designer to decorate the interior, and the Sheik or whoever was in charge, in all his vast knowledge, complained about the design being too bland and apparently forced her to redesign it.

I hate it when people who don't know what they are doing have a lot of power, and worse when they start telling people who do know what they're doing how to do it.

modelic33• 17 years ago

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

modelic33• 17 years ago

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

ryanwaggoner2• 17 years ago

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

occam• 17 years ago

I have a hard time believing this about Australians:

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

dsplittgerber• 17 years ago

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

kazuya• 17 years ago

Joi Ito has another view on this:

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

known• 17 years ago

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

The dark side of Dubai

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