Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down | Hacker News Reader

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down

nytimes.com

79 pointsgibsonf153 comments

Dubai always looked to me like it was some sort of Las Vegas without gambling, alcohol or sex. i.e. a hollow shell.

Now it turns out that it isn't even that.

Can't say I'm sorry.

Surprisingly, there's plenty of alcohol and sex there. Gambling is a separate story.

... Compare it to Vegas. Alcohol is banned most places in Dubai. In Vegas there aren't even open container laws, you can walk around with a cocktail. As for the sex side, how many strip clubs are around? How many escorts? You can't walk down the strip without being offered cards for call girls. In Dubai you can't even kiss in public.

Dubai's "seedy" side is that it seems like a theme park for a modern city more than a modern city.

""There is also another side to Dubai’s booming market. Most large hotels are little more than dens of prostitution."

http://secretdubai.blogspot.com/

"It was difficult at the time to get any sense of realism from the city. You’d try to apply for credit cards, and find that nobody at the banks were really interested in giving you one — they had bigger fish to catch...

It was that way with houses and apartments you wanted to rent. The landlords never bothered to follow up on whether you wanted it, if you thought it was a reasonable price. If you had a problem with it — with handing over US$50 000 in one cheque, for example (they have a practice of paying for yearly rental in one or two cheques at a go), then it was your fault, and you had suck it up if you didn’t like it.. It felt unreal...

Nothing about this city is sustainable. The property boom, led by the multi-million dollar apartments along Sheikh Zayed Road, are perhaps doable in the upturn. They were built for investment, not for living."

http://popagandhi.com/932/dubai-redux/

Strictly speaking, Vegas does have open container laws. You aren't allowed to carry a beverage within 100 feet of an establishment with an off-sale license. Of course, enforcement of that ordinance is another question.

At any rate, for a country in the Middle East, they are a lot more open to Western values than anybody else on the peninsula.

Are you referring to drinking, gambling & prostitution?

I guess Andrew Blair from Scotland would disagree:

"Blair is determined to stay in Dubai at all costs. He said:It’s the clubs, the bars, the beautiful women, its tax free, all-round good weather. I could give you an A to Z. He added:This is the place to be.

"http://www.7days.ae/storydetails.php?id=72910&title=A%20...

> Now it turns out that it isn't even that.

There were a lot of almost convincing articles about how the Dubai building boom had a lot to do with laundering global organized crime money.

Not surprised...Dubai has sounded way too good to be true for a long time. I doubt you really get cockroaches coming out of the plumbing, but I would believe that the palm island is sinking. I wonder if it was really a con (which implies intent from the beginning) or if they just got carried away and were then in denial that they were seriously overextended.

“Before, so many of us were living a good life here,” Mr. Thiab said. “Now we cannot pay our loans. We are all just sleeping, smoking, drinking coffee and having headaches because of the situation.”

Dare I suggest that all the coffee and smoking may be responsible for the headaches?

I'm not sure if they meant con in the premeditated, organised sense. But there are probably all sorts of shady dealings going on.

Economies like Dubai's (& Hong Kong & other gateways) tend to attract money launderers, scams & other such 'cons.' There were probably builders that knew it couldn't last but built anyway.

Hong Kong is a working city and a great place.

I'm a year or two away from eligibility of permanent resident status here in HK and, while I obviously haven't hated living here enough yet to pull up stakes and move, I can't really agree with your assessment of HK as a great place.

The pollution is frighteningly terrible most of the year (some from vehicles here, some from coal-fired power plants here, and about 60% from industrial activities across the border on the Mainland), about half of the population endure a desperately low standard of living and live in sprawling public housing estates because they simply cannot afford to purchase or rent apartments of their own, the economy is run by a handful of tycoons that dominate every sector and drive the price of each and every good and service up, elections for the chief executive (local equivalent of mayor/governor) are "small circle" (a few hundred people, mostly pawns of the tycoons or pro-Beijing folks cast votes last time), etc.

It's a third world city with some British traditions that are being systematically expunged or, when that would likely draw too great of an outcry, gradually eroded under Beijing's rule.

It's a place run by it's own rules for completely utilitarian reasons. Without pretence of ideology. That's also a similarity with Dubai.

Hong Kong has a far longer history of prominence then Dubai. It grew slower & it has lost its position slower. The underlying reasons for HK's importance have been dissolving. There is no reason to use HK as an intermediary for dealings with China. There is no reason not to establish an office in the mainland.

But being in slow relative decline meant has meant that they fared alright. (a) Decline Relative to China can still be reasonable growth. IE they can have a smaller share of a bigger pie. (b) The secondary industries: Tourism, financial services, consultancies etc. have had a chance to have a go on their own.

> I wonder if it was really a con (which implies intent from the beginning) or if they just got carried away and were then in denial that they were seriously overextended.

I think the latter. It's far too elaborate for a con. And people are very good at persuading themselves that bad things won't happen.

A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about $272,000).

That'll inspire confidence.

By my reckoning, if the law passes it would immediately apply to the people who wrote the law. Now that's leading by example.

"Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out."

Absolute garbage reporting, Robert Worth and the New York Times should be ashamed of themselves. I read the NYT for quality articles with solid investigative reporting backing them up, not FUD and gossip trash like the quote above (regardless of it's merit)

It's reporting that there are rumours = telling you something about how the locals feel. That's the reason for newspapers and reporters (and spys) instead of just reading raw data feeds. What people are saying - true or not - is the important news.

This is the line of reasoning Fox uses to justify reapeating innuendo without bothering to corroborate stories or check facts. It's an embarrasment to journalism.

Isn't calling them "lurid rumors" enough?

It's not garbage reporting, it's a badly written sentence that makes it read as if the "lurid rumors" part only applies to the first part (sinking), not the second (cockroaches).

Dubai has debtors' prisons! Wow.

As a mental experiment, let's imagine there were debtors' prisons in the US.

Do you think this would restrain consumer credit card/mortgage borrowing and prevent people form getting into the current mess?

A large number of citizens might be under house arrest, as I think spending against future earnings is part of our culture.

Very few people borrow money with the expectation of not being able to pay it back.

Not in the UAE/Dubai. It took a little to google up this story I read a while ago. The story of a guy who lost his job, fell behind on his loans and ended up in prison:

"She puts me in touch with Richard, a twinkly fortysomething who came to Dubai as a salesman with a multinational company. 'And then, in one month, I had a car accident, lost my job, and my marriage fell apart.'

Richard fell behind on his car payments, his bank loans, his credit cards. 'Everybody lives beyond their means here. It's all front. It's like Dubai - a totally false appearance to what it actually is.' He was charged by the police with defaulting on his loans and his passport was confiscated. 'So I couldn't get another job and I couldn't pay the debt, and I couldn't leave the country... and to cut a very long story short, I got 12 months.'

It's quite a story. He's only been out two weeks, but he's still managing just about to smile. But not even the judges are Emiratis: they're on short-stay visas like everyone else, and the only thing he had going in his favour, he says, is that he wasn't Asian. 'Tons of them are in for practically nothing: jaywalking or owing £10.'"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/05/middleeast.gende...

Another crazy non-secular society.

Dubai is a constitutional monarchy:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dubai

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_monarchy

But this doesn't excuse the fact that "debtor's prison" is a horrible, horrible, horrible concept in place in Dubai.

But Islam is probably forefront in their decision making. It doesn't matter what the governmental system actually is.

While in the hindsight Dubai turned out to not make sense as a "global" city, it still might make sense for its vast "region".

I mean for the 2.1 billion living between Europe and South East Asia, (with a combined economy worth $1.8 trillion in terms of GDP, growing until recently at an annual rate of 5 per cent.) namely: North and Eastern Africa, the Levant, the Caspian, the Indian Subcontinent and the GCC States.

Dubai is not Las Vegas/Miami/New York, but for these 2.1 billion, a tuned-down version of these, even blended chaotically in a small city-state, would still completely make sense.

I am long Dubai.

This makes no sense. Vegas is popular because it is a central destination that is both cheap to get to and has a wide "scalability" in terms of spending. You can go as lavish or as run-down as you feel like, and that's part of the charm.

It's pretty darned expensive to get to Dubai from southeast Asia, and not to mention if you're talking about "hub of entertainment" you already have major cities like Shanghai and Macau. Why would the 1.6+ billion people living in China head all the way out to Dubai when there are plenty of "global" cities right on its doorstep?

Not to mention these cities are actually based on real industries, real exports of real goods, and have an economy that doesn't rely on hype and speculation.

Dubai has no future. It doesn't even have that many oil holdings, nor does it sit in the middle of a large industrial economy. It has no reason to exist at the scale that people seem to think it deserves.

It's a safe (politically, legally, physically) place in an unstable region to base your headquarters or send your workers for R+R. Monaco has survived for 500years for similar reasons without a great deal of mineral wealth.

All of those things you describe need to be underwritten by solid economics. Rather than Monaco, think Switzerland. Or better yet, Malta.

Economies are complex. It's simplistic to think of Dubai as simply smoke & mirrors.

I would have said Singapore or Hong Kong. IE, Dubai is (was) a comfortable outpost for the (extremely profitable in good years) companies doing business in the region. If you need a base from which to conduct your dealings with Saudi or Iran, Riyadh or Tehran aren't as attractive as Dubai. Beijing wasn't either 25 years ago.

Then you have the second level of the economy. The financial services & the like servicing the companies that chase their customers out there. Then you have a large number of cashed up expats with less family, more income & fewer vestige expenses. You have the industries catering to them (real estate, entertainment). Then you have the industries that are comfortable extensions of this local luxury entertainment market. Tourists, tax refuge, criminals (eg money laundering).

There is n doubt that this was an obvious bubble. Especially in real estate. But directly selling commodities is not the only way to make a buck. That's compounded by the fact that no-one is sentimental about Dubai. If luxury apartment population starts to drop, that's it.

2.1 billion people was the figure for people living between Europe and South East Asia (i.e North and Eastern Africa, the Levant, the Caspian, the Indian Subcontinent and the GCC States). China is of course a different story.

Giorgio Armani once said "Dubai is the new New York. It's the New York of the 21st century" (http://tinyurl.com/aqc63r). It turns out not to be as he thought, but for these 2.1 billion people, a cheap flight away from their cities, Dubai will always have its appeal.

Funny how about less than 3 months New York Magazine came out with this article "Escape to Dubai": http://nymag.com/news/features/52180/

An article about foreigners in Dubai managed to get written without interviewing a single Indian - amusing. I was under the impression that Indians constituted a large portion of the foreigners in Dubai.

The Indians usually work in more menial jobs and aren't in a position to flee.

Don't confuse "menial" with "low paid". I'm sure there are many Indians working in Dubai that do just as much non-menial labor as others and simply get paid a lot less for it...just as in other parts of the world.

Also, try not to degrade "menial" labor unless you've spent a few years digging ditches yourself. Your perspective may change.

I don't think he was degrading the work. The definition of "menial" is:

"of or relating to servants"

He was saying that many of the Indians there are working under conditions that can make it impossible to leave weather they would like to or not. That is not a comment on Indians in general nor on the value of digging ditches. Rather it seems to be a comment on the terrible societal problems in Dubai.

And also don't confuse "Indians" with "low paid". I'm not Indian myself, but I've had plenty of colleagues who are, and get paid as good a salary (if not better) than most Americans in the same job. I'm not sure I like this constant association with being Indian and being paid in pennies.

http://www.daijiworld.com/news/news_disp.asp?n_id=55704

It's the great escape by Indians who've hit the dead-end in Dubai.

Local police have found at least 3,000 automobiles -- sedans, SUVs, regulars -- abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the last four months. Police say most of the vehicles had keys in the ignition, a clear sign they were left behind by owners in a hurry to take flight.

As the old saying goes, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

what if it never seemed good at all?

Halliburtan just moved their headquarters to Dubai. I wonder what they are going to do now.

This is why you stay away from these countries. You don't have the same rights and can't expect sane legal proceedings like you can in America.

Make sure you're an American though, or else you might end up at Guantánamo- well, pre-Obama you might have.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/02/us/nationalspecial3/02gitm...

It's Potosí for the new millenium. Super ghost town.

If they knew their history, they'd know that having beautiful architecture can't save you if there's nothing to do.

No amount of money would lure me to a foreign country with debtor's prisons, where people go to jail for having a tiny speck of marijuana leaf found on the bottom of their shoe:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23436226-details/...

I do wonder what people were thinking.

Some of the prescription meds I take would have me arrested upon landing in Dubai.

Scary stuff.

Get thrown in the slammer for 4 years for eating a poppy seed roll. Ouch.

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