Let's not gloss over the absolutely appalling respect many of these societies have for human dignity. Public executions and flogging, discrimination and imprisonment based solely on gender, absolutely zero regard for freedom of conscience when it comes to matters of religion.

There's only so much you can get away with by saying it's my society's accepted practice, what's wrong is wrong. And there's plenty wrong with other countries and societies too, including my own, but it doesn't excuse human rights indifference.

The part where it talks about 6500 migrant worker deaths over the decade of World Cup facility construction has a serious error. It fails to look at the death rate.

Qatar has around 2 million migrant workers, and the 6500 deaths are all deaths of migrants in the country rather than just work related deaths. 6500 deaths over 10 years in a population of 2 million is a death rate of 32.5/100k/year.

A death rate of 32.5/100k/year should raise questions, especially if we assume that migrant workers in Qatar skew younger, but the question should be why is it so low?

For comparison the death rate for 15-24 year old males in the US is 100/100k/year, and for 25-34 year old males it is 177/100k/year.

It's possible that Qatar's poor treatment of migrant workers does result in an unusually high job-related death rate but something else Qatar does results in an unusually low death rate when not at work with the net result being the overall death rate is low.

In the US the top causes of death of young males are poisoning (which includes drug overdoses), suicide, automobile accidents, and homicide.

Qatar is very anti-drug, with harsh penalties and almost no tolerance, giving them a drug death rate around 4% of the US drug death rate.

They are also much more intolerant of drunk driving, which is a major contributor to automobile deaths in the US. In Qatar if there is any detectable alcohol in your blood after an accident you are considered to have been drunk driving. That threshold is so low that you would be considered drunk if you were in an accident in the morning and had one drink the night before. Also I'd expect that most migrant workers use some other form of transport most of the time.

Their homicide rate is also very low.

Are those enough to offset a high work-related death rate. I don't know. I should know because all of the articles I've seen talking about migrant worker deaths in Qatar should have looked into this.

https://africanarguments.org/2024/03/go-gulf-is-ethiopia-sac...

Bluntly, I hope nobody comes to their aid when oil ends and their economies inevitably collapse - they can go back to bashing each other on the heads with rocks in the desert, and stop destroying the whole damned planet for a quick buck.

Unfortunately, this is the outcome when you turn tribal hunter-gatherers into billionaires overnight. The scum always rises to the top in a society built on dominance and violence.

Why does cultural relativism excuse horrors of actual modern people with access to and awareness of all modern thinking, modern technology, and modern examples of societies who achieved moral progress, but we’re perfectly comfortable saying slave owners of the past are responsible for their crimes despite being raised by slave owners in a society of slave owners embedded in a world of slave owners with a history absolutely chalk full of slave owners?

For example I think that there were relatively moral people who lived in e.g. the US and Saudi Arabia ~300 years ago and accepted slavery unquestioningly. It would have been better if they had questioned and rejected it, but I don't think they are evil for not doing so. In the modern US I think that only someone tremendously immoral would accept and participate in enslaving others.

This belief makes me a moral relativist (at least by some reasonable definitions). All the same I think I'm much closer aligned with your feelings on the morality of modern Middle Eastern society than GP.

All that to say, being a moral relativist allows you to have weird dissonant views, but it doesn't require it.

---

For if every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, like the statues of Daedalus, or the tripods of Hephaestus, which, says the poet, "of their own accord entered the assembly of the Gods."

If, in like manner, the shuttle would weave and the plectrum touch the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.

- Aristotle ~350BC

---

He also made regular indirect mention of abolitionists and abolitionist causes, which have obviously existed for millennia. It's not just some coincidence that the Industrial Revolution happens and within about a century most of every country (that had benefited from said industrialization) had outlawed slavery. It's not that we became more moral, but rather it became comfortable enough to dispose with slavery. So we did, and then attributed that to "modern thinking."

[1] - https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.mb.txt

This line of thought can be traced all the way through to the modern day, and obviously well up to abolition.

There's really not much evidence at all that slaveholders saw their activities the way you describe ("necessary evil"). There's no evidence that we first had a necessity for slavery and then obviated it through automation. In fact, automation in the Americas increased demand on the labor of enslaved people.

If there was any external triggering event of abolition, it'd have been Darwin's On The Origin of Species and contemporaneous breakthroughs in science that destroyed the philosophical foundations that slavery was built upon (natural god-given supremacy, as Aristotle believed).

The abolitionist movement was an intellectual and moral one, through and through. You can just read the writings of abolitionists to hear what convinced them into their positions.

But it never remained abolished because of a simple logical problem you run into. The reality of the world - past, present, and future - is that stronger powers dominate weaker powers -- the same reality upon which Aristotle based his cognitive dissonance. And so so long as slavery provided a significant material benefit, powers that embraced slavery would dominate those that did not. And that dominance would inevitably lead to the institution (or reinstitution) of slavery in the weaker powers. The British Empire and its spread of slavery around the globe is but one of many examples.

So you saw this regular flip flopping. One ideologically minded leader would end slavery, only for it to come back later. What changed with the industrial revolution is that the latest end of slavery no longer had any particularly negative consequences, instead we saw the exact opposite. Countries that abolished slavery, which was primarily a rural/plantation based phenomena, actually started to grow exceptionally rapidly on the back of the emerging systems of industrial wage labor, while rural and plantation style production became less and less economically relevant. Slavery had become obsolete.

---

There's some interesting parallels with slavery and modern day conscriptions. A country locks up its borders, prevents people from leaving, starts forcibly conscripting them into the military, gives them a gun, and sends them off to die. This is utterly barbaric, and most people would agree with such. Yet it remains a thing, and will remain a thing for the foreseeable future, for the exact same reason that slavery was perpetuated.

Countries that turn to conscription will be more powerful than those that don't. When this reality becomes no longer true (perhaps due to war becoming more mechanical in nature) we'll certainly finally abolish this barbaric behavior, and then claim it's due to some 'greater moral understanding', as if people alive today can't see with their own two eyes what an unnatural and abhorrent behavior this is. Of course we can! But trying to permanently stop something that's a significant means to power is like trying to stop a train by walking in front of it.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_abolition_of_slave...

But we haven't achieved moral progress.

G7/G20 countries have essentially merely physically outsourced slavery out of sight to second world factories and third world hell holes.

Through the magic of fiat money and currency exchange rates, we have deluded ourselves for half a century that we are in fact not colonizers and oppressors anymore.

Just one example are the Coltane mining wars in Congo: 1998-2008 5.2 million killed or dead from hunger (and it'd probably be higher if people hadn't more or less stopped counting after 2006). You probably didn't even know it happened,and yet millions today work at slaves to continue producing minerals for our digital comfort.

Slavery was bad. Slavery is bad. Slavery is not excused. However, frothing at the mouth with rage when speaking about the actions of another society because they don’t share the same moral values as you without thinking a step further is hollow, it is empty, it is meaningless.

Why is “modern thinking” (whatever that means) good? Why is maximum individual freedom at the expense of the whole good? I am like you, I believe in that, but if you interact with people from different cultures, you will discover that is not a belief held by everyone. For many people, individual freedom at the expense of the whole is not good and they have observed that from these “modern” societies. Look at how deeply unhappy the U.S is, the pain and suffering of hundreds of millions of people. Is limiting access to healthcare an example of “modern thinking”?

I will argue that by many standards, what we view as barbaric has better outcomes. Have you met a Singaporean? I disagree with their criminal justice system (as I do the U.S. but I rank Singapore’s as “worse”) and yet it has better outcomes for the majority of its citizens by most measures. Are they the measures you and I care about? Probably not, because to you and I, hanging someone for using heroin is not a fair price to be paid for a lower crime rate and higher GDP, but that’s a moral judgement, not some objective “modern” absolute. If you don’t value human life above all else (which many cultures don’t) then killing a few drug addicts a year to make life for millions of others better, that’s inconsequential — and excellent “modern” thinking about doing the most good!

If you can’t imagine why the bad of anti-lgbt sentiment is far outweighed by the good of community-spirit from an anti-lgbt religion then you’re not considering “outcomes”.

I am saying that there are countless dimensions that matter, and there are better and worse locations along those dimensions.

On the dimension of drug addiction rates, Singapore is doing better than the US. On the dimension of personal liberties, Singapore is doing worse than the US.

This observation is not a counter argument to my position, it’s a disproof of yours.

Saying we cannot make value judgments about these things implies we cannot justifiably take action that would nudge us into a different location along any of these different dimensions. How could you possibly decide to change things if there’s no such thing as a better, more preferable possible future state?

Here’s a gut check: are you comfortable with your moral system landing you solidly in the “let’s allow slavery” camp in the 1800s? After all, the disagreement between slave holders and abolitionists was one of culture and opinions, and as we know now there’s no such thing as a better or worse position to hold on such matters. Does that moral system seem like a good one to you?

I hope I wouldn't need to say it, but for the record: I oppose slavery. I oppose gender based discrimination. I oppose sexuality based discrimination. I oppose racism. I oppose the death penalty. I oppose drug criminalisation. I oppose the American prison system. I oppose the smug western superiority complex about our behaviour being "modern" or the "best" or "ahead" of the rest of the world. I oppose referring to Saudi Arabia as "not modern" (or backwards or whatever term is in right now) which I believe is patronising and a view reserved for those without the willingness to be introspective.

For the oppressed gay man in Saudi Arabia, there's a gay man homeless on the streets of the United States, dying from neglect, after being kicked out of their home as a teenager by their Christian fundamentalist parents, thrown to the mercy of a society that couldn't care less about them. Let's put them on a spectrum, how many points is "dying homeless on the streets of America because of being gay" compared to "can't be openly gay in Saudi Arabia"? How many points for "robbed on the streets of San Francisco for the 8th time" when compared to "can leave valuables out in public without concern because there's so little crime in Singapore"?

If your vision for a better world starts with disparaging Saudi Arabia, I fear you are deeply uninspired and will not have the impact on the world that you could have if you instead focused on yourself and your culture. I also hope someday you appreciate the irony of you having worked for Palantir of all companies while talking about moral superiority of the west. I wonder where Peter Thiel would land on our Spectrum Of Moral Superiority. Actually, I don't want to know, let me live another day without reading a defence of that ghoul.

I said that you'd land on the conclusion of allowing it, presumably despite your own personal preferences. Many people who opposed abolition also personally opposed slavery, but used arguments identical to yours to oppose action against slavery. The lack of action would've, obviously, allowed slavery to persist indefinitely.

Can you explain how (or if) your moral system would prevent you from landing on that conclusion? It's a simple question that doesn't depend on theatrics to ask nor answer.

My question to you is, do you believe the United Arab Emirates is more righteous than the United States? According to many measures of "goodness" like the Human Development Index (and the inequality-adjusted Human Development Index) the United Arab Emirates is a more "good" place than the United States and therefore, in your view of comparable righteousness, the United Arab Emirates is a more righteous place? Yet, the United Arab Emirates is, to many westerners (including myself and I am sure you) a place of many moral ills (including one of the most heinous: slavery). Do you believe that on your multi-dimensional most-good morality spectrum the United Arab Emirates out ranks the United States?

I'll answer that for you: no, you don't. And deep beneath this facade of objective morality, you know that morality is so deeply ingrained in your cultural upbringing that you cannot sincerely state that the United Arab Emirates is more righteous than the United States, and that regardless of what any measure, whether it's one dimension or many dimensional, whether it's black and white or a spectrum, regardless of what that measure says, nothing is above your sense of what is right and what is wrong.

Not clear what point you’re arguing against by saying “HDI says UAE is good yet you don’t agree with it!” Why on earth would I defer full moral judgment to HDI?

I never claimed my moral system is objective, so I’m also not sure what facade you’re referring to.

You may assert it but morality is not defined by or measured in outcomes, morality is a cultural product. If your moral system is not objective, if your moral system is a culturally-influenced personal belief in what is right and wrong, it is totally incoherent to say that Saudi Arabia has not made moral progress or that they have not used "modern thinking" because by their moral standards they have, and by their moral standards you (and I) are the immoral.

If you'd like to compare the United States to Saudi Arabia on human rights, press freedom, education, crime, freedom of religion, gender discrimination, do that. They have outcomes that we can measure, and don't worry, they're influenced by morality, so you can still pass judgement.

A large number of immigrants opt to bring their culture with them and retain it in their host country though.

Not quite - but you do need to be a moral universalist.

Because you whenever it was intentional or not make yourself sound very racist by effectively saying "x person from y society actually like the barbarism said society has".

Comparisons of others in this case societies is crucial to make your own society better, failing to do makes us just reinforce bad ideas and what were then once local issues or small scale become systematic.

When it then is the case that your society is "better" then another society, then you can propose change or at least show why it's better in the "marketplace of ideas", the mistake of the past was that we saw our societies as inherently superior and as such bruteforcing said our way of life was seen as morally good and not tyranny.

Many citizens of Singapore are very happy as citizens of Singapore, many of them look at the west as barbaric: the crime ridden cities of the U.S, the poverty, the abject failure of western governments to protect their citizens despite very high tax rates… if killing a few criminals is the price to pay to live in a comparable utopia, so be it? What’s barbaric about a caning? The U.S. sentences people to death!

I am from the west (despite your assertion, I live in a Muslim country) and believe in very western ideals, I believe in freedom for the individual, it’s deeply ingrained in me, however, my non-academic experience has shown me that this is not a universal truth. Many cultures do not care for the individual, they care for the family, a group of people bound by blood to be one part of the whole. Many cultures believe that sacrificing oneself for the family is noble and right and that to be an individual is to be barbaric.

Once you accept that individual freedom is a western ideal, and not fundamental to the human condition, it becomes much easier to understand that other cultures are fundamentally different.

Since again then the logic of "savages will be savages because they crave it" applies.

>The American culture of kicking your children out of home the day they turn 18 is more barbaric to some than the death penalty

For proclaiming to being cultured you make an example that isn't even a cultural norm in the USA but at best a trend within American household entirely predicated on whenever or not the economic situation is suitable for such norms to even exist.

Not only that but if you actually talk with said Americans during that time I would take a gander and say that the majority of them didn't feel bothered not because "their way of life" but because it isn't inherently barbaric if it's done with good intention (independence and spreading your wings).

>Many citizens of Singapore are very happy as citizens of Singapore, many of them look at the west as barbaric: the crime ridden cities of the U.S, the poverty, the abject failure of western governments to protect their citizens despite very high tax rates… if killing a few criminals is the price to pay to live in a comparable utopia, so be it? What’s barbaric about a caning? The U.S. sentences people to death!

This is so overly reductive, first of all there are plenty of people in Singapore that do not share this idea that you are presenting that Singapore is a "comparable utopia" nor can you or they be taken serious by conflating barbarism with "crime" and "government failing to protect their citizens" (whatever this means).

And I love the whataboutism at the end.

>I am from the west (despite your assertion, I live in a Muslim country) and believe in very western ideals, I believe in freedom for the individual, it’s deeply ingrained in me, however, my non-academic experience has shown me that this is not a universal truth. Many cultures do not care for the individual, they care for the family, a group of people bound by blood to be one part of the whole. Many cultures believe that sacrificing oneself for the family is noble and right and that to be an individual is to be barbaric.

And you show this enlightenment by making such crude and clumsy argumentation spoken to the point that anyone can mistake you for making some very racist statements?

And these society that "focus on family instead of the individual" has severe issues within their societies when it comes to economic, cultural, social and political concerns that is undermining what they hold dear.

But if you want to essentially cope by proclaiming "these areas aren't important, just their quaint way of life is!" then you're only adding fuel to the fire for the people's suffering.

Even then if I were to take your argument at face value, the issue with your argument is that liberalism which is the cornerstone of individualism is not inherently against focusing on the family, instead they are concern with ensure that the individual can be free to pursue their aspirations and be free from unequal treatment in the face of society, the law and the nation... In other words you can be as "sacrificing yourself for the family" as you want.

Individual freedom comes out of the necessity of it existing not from idealistic daydreaming, thousands had to sacrifice their lives to give their future (family) the individual freedoms the people can all enjoy equally.

You are literally comparing societies.

I really don't understand what your point is.

> Let's not gloss over the fact that we in the west do the same.

I'm curious where in the "west" you're from. At least in my part of the "western world", we absolutely don't do any of this.

Totally: Norway and Saudi Arabia are exactly the same in terms of humanism, it's just a matter of optics, right?

This in no way mitigates anybody else's issues, but that's an issue that I, personally, wish we could solve (and when we're done with that, maybe we can tackle the calorie laundering that goes on in that industry).

I think the problem is that in a globalised economy, a local issue quickly becomes an everybody issue. Am I less responsible, as a consumer, because the injury happens a long way away?

Of course, we are responsible most directly for our own interactions with other people. Less so with other people's bad behavior.

You go down the other road, there's an indirect connection to every person on earth. Refuse to deal with everybody and anybody because of that, you're paralyzed.

I get it, that was a rhetorical question. Mine is not a rhetorical answer. It's hard enough, dealing decently with the people I come into contact with. Struggling to make every problem into my problem, there's very little gain in that.

Before anybody says I'm callous and unfeeling, well, you'd have to know what I do in my own community. But few bother to weight that, at all, when they're playing the blamethrowing game.

"They enslave their children's children, who make compromise with sin"

I think about that quote a lot. It sets an unachievable standard. But I don't think it's wrong.

You want to seize on a cause, go ahead. That would entail work, doing research, sending letters, something! That I could get behind; in fact, as I suggest, many of us are doing something every day. And maybe get a little weary of the warriors who respect gestures over substance.

Edit: contrast ME with Mexico who is running out of oil. Yet, they are able to build because they happen to have some of the hardest working labor in the world (though not notably skilled). I rather bet on Mexico revival over ME 100/100.

They is so much money poured down on them that they don't understand the concept of work, to them it is just a hobby.

Not something that directly concerns me, but I'm personally more worried about restrictions on freedom of speech, but regardless not somewhere I'd be willing to live (I currently do live in Switzerland).

These laws are also pretty much never enforced in UAE, as far as I understand.

https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/united-arab-emirate...

They are never enforced, until you become a target, then you're arrested and charged with a list violations.

I mean, we do this too, to some degree. But this is naive.

This one is better: a woman in UAE went to the doctor(gynecologist) and ended up in jail because doctor found out she is pregnant but not married.

In many American states a raped woman has to carry her rapist off spring to term

In America black people are significantly over represented in jails, poverty, illiteracy, single parent families.

I’m sure the 5 largest western democracies have similar issues

Formally documented de jure discrimination is hardly the only available approach. For example, the term "grandfather clause" stems from Southern states applying severe voter restrictions (poll taxes, literacy tests, etc.) but exempting anyone whose ancestors had the right to vote on a particular pre-Civil War date.

Functionally? Permitted poor/uneducated whites but not blacks to vote without ever mentioning a race in the law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinn_v._United_States

"No person shall be registered as an elector of this state or be allowed to vote in any election held herein, unless he be able to read and write any section of the Constitution of the state of Oklahoma; but no person who was, on January 1, 1866, or any time prior thereto, entitled to vote under any form of government, or who at that time resided in some foreign nation, and no lineal descendant of such person, shall be denied the right to register and vote because of his inability to so read and write sections of such Constitution."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_rape has some more examples.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_of_Alexandre_Robert

A number of particularly nasty elements to the response—including that the authorities knew that one of the rapists carried HIV, and had previously segregated him in custody to prevent him spreading the virus to other prisoners, but they fabricated medical tests to the contrary and lied to the boy’s family.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fact-coalition-report-us-money-...

Which is also excellent not just for stealing, but also for murder. Half a year ago a German-born Pole killed a family in a car crash and run away to UAE.[0] They tried to extradit him but without success.

[0] https://bnnbreaking.com/breaking-news/accidents/suspected-fa...

If you look into it you'll find that it's a nice marketplace for israeli oligarchs running operations in DR Congo, e.g. for diamonds which Israel exports unexpected amounts of, and you'll also find that the Rapid Support Forces/Janjaweed in Sudan are buddies of the UAE. Unlike Switzerland the UAE is quite aggressive militarily, e.g. occupying part of Yemen.

Main export of Israel: https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-product/diamonds/repo...

Local presentation of mining sites: https://en.israelidiamond.co.il/wikidiamond/diamond-mining-m...

Some historical background and interesting sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_industry_in_Israel

As mentioned, reading up on Dan Gertler is a good idea too.

Sudan complaining recently about foreign involvement: https://sudantribune.com/article283888/

If you look into Omar al-Bashir's 'career' you'll likely find it enlightening about the degree of Gulf involvement in Sudan. The Gulf states are really, really good at PR, they can afford the biggest, most efficient firms to run it for them, but there are a lot of books about the colonial history in the region and how trade and economics have evolved over the last century.

The strategically importantly located island of Socotra has a really interesting history, lots of pirates and stuff. Since 2018 UAE is occupying it and lately Yemen news sources have claimed that Israel is in on it, and the US DoD has been asked whether they're there too. Starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_Emirates_takeover_...

Funny you mention Switzerland because they have some of the highest skilled labor in the world.

The Gulf countries have more than enough expertise to manage and run their wealth for the foreseeable future. To say they’ll be poor again without oil is simply ignorant of the facts and probably related to the point I made above.

I wanted to reply "But Sheikh Mohammed himself said so!" but then trying to back up my claim I realized it's false. [0] It's amazing how many false things we take for granted just because they align with our world-view (and make a good story).

[O] https://factcheck.afp.com/sheikh-mohammed-did-not-say-great-...

It's not possible to run a functioning country (which SA undeniably is) without a large number of people who are at least somewhat competent, at least somewhat hardworking, and at least somewhat loyal to the country. You may be able to rely on cheap migrant workers for the hard physical labor, but not for the planning and administration that makes the whole thing work.

The oil money printer can hide a lot of problems. A small percentage of somewhat competent people aren't guaranteed to be able to provide for a huge number of useless freeloaders if the gravy train stops. Look at Venezuela for a somewhat similar situation.

But I wouldn’t somehow think it’s accurate or acceptable to claim Greeks are all lazy and rude.

There are all kinds of promises when times are good, that change as soon as the economic winds change. This project is more evidence of that.

This project was a side project and always has been. Its success or lack thereof has very little to do with the overall financial position of the country.

Yes, this is how you compare populations.

Quite correct. I had people reaching out to me saying they want me to contract for Arabic millionaires -- websites, backends, a lot of stuff together -- but every time they demanded time tracking, they wanted to know my physical address, wanted my photo, and one of them even wanted me to install camera so he can track me in real time with some misguided AI-based software.

Each time I giggled to myself and responded something along the lines of:

"While the offer sounds tempting financially, and while I would love to have some tech independence, your offer falls short on the privacy front, and it also contains clauses that can nullify the independence to choose tech tomorrow. I'll have to decline and if you are open to feedback: insisting on face tracking is not how you hire the really good programmers, to which I don't pretend to belong but have known a good number of them".

So yes their mindset is apparently always 10 masters + 20_000_000 slaves and as hard as they are trying, they will not export this culture to anywhere else except maybe India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, China and a few others. The West will not change for them no matter how rich they are.

The Qatari have also obviously paid off various FIFA officials but hey, that's just football.

I live in Dubai but grew up in the United States. Despite what people may believe, there is freedom of religion here, women aren’t oppressed, and the government genuinely cares about having a good city to live in.

I don't want to open a flame war, but I visited the city during the Expo and its a highway with a stripe of skyscrapers on each side and slums beyond. It's impossible to walk anywhere. (To be fair, the public transport is pretty good, as long as you live next to the highway.)

When I read "a good city to live in" I imagine something like Vienna.

That is fair. I guess my comparison is San Diego (where I grew up) and Mexico, where I lived all of my adult life until moving to Dubai in 2022.

The city is building a new metro line and improving on walkability as new neighborhoods of high population density pop up. It will still be very focused on shopping malls with AC because of the heat during the summers. Official records of real estate transactions have a data point for "closest shopping mall" for a reason.

It baffles me that anyone, let alone a bunch of people, would look at this and say “ah, yes, this seems like a good place to live”.

To each their own, I guess.

And so is Hong Kong and a few other places. The question is, is that worth the cost? A cost that's mostly hidden from public view and scrutiny?

Even Vienna has slum-like areas, every major city does. Not sure how that's a knock against Dubai. I'm not even sure what slums you saw in Dubai, Having lived there for a few years there's definitely low income housing in certain parts but I'd struggle to call them slums.

Does this only apply to rich westerners though?

So most of this is not true according to you:

https://www.state.gov/reports/2016-report-on-international-r...

> women aren’t oppressed

and this is all false too?

https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/03/04/uae-greater-progress-nee...

Couldn't that element be self-sufficient on solar?

https://eepower.com/industry-articles/is-desert-based-solar-...

The sand bit feels like a filter problem.

Night happens even in the desert. Plus what others said about wind. Here's video about a recent sandstorm: https://www.thenationalnews.com/uae/dust-storm-sweeps-across...

I find it very interesting that when nuclear power is brought up, there are a lot of people who talk up how solar + wind & batteries are a perfect solution. Yet when it comes to the Middle East and conditions there, none of the back and forth about how it is not the best solution occurs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa#Labour

In 2021, inmates in federal prisons earned between $0.23 to $1.15 per hour.

The workers in SA aren’t criminals being jailed for some crime.

The US believes the constitution ends at its borders and people; This is what the law is in SA.

I can't say I like it either, but I think jailing human beings and enslaving them to the benefit of others is simply not Good.

If you can agree then maybe we can work together to fix it in the US in a lifetime or two, but there's frankly little we can do about SA if we can't show the world what being Good looks like in America.

Are you suggesting they should have just remained on camels while sand blows around them?

> I'll be frank: I have a deep mistrust of any culture present in the Arabian peninsula since about 632 CE.

Also, AFAIK they are very aware that oil money isn't going to keep pouring forever and they indeed are trying to diversify. Their elites all study in UK, France, Switzerland and the USA and the questionable stuff they do is actually about the local culture they are trying to transform.

Their prince who is celebrated for pushing social and cultural reforms is the same guy who ordered the killing of a journalist in their Istanbul embassy. So, it is what it is.

BTW, IMHO they should look into what Jewish did in Israel with the Kibbutz. I'm a great fan of the idea and the Jewish culture that made it possible and it appears to work. Maybe instead of building giant skyscrapers and shopping malls, take a note from the Israeli or even work with them instead of pouring tour money into "Las Vegas". Skip the illegal settlements and genocide of the locals of course, but the Israeli have already proven methods of building high quality high prosperity communities on barely habitable lands. So, the Arabs should take a note. Maybe they don't have other option than trying to transform the environment using their fortune but they have options on how to do it exactly.

You always have another option than to treat people like cattle though.

> the questionable stuff they do is actually about the local culture they are trying to transform.

Is it though? Or their Western education has helped put things in perspective, they understood how good they have it and they want to double down on it and make very sure they'll never lose it?

> Their prince who is celebrated for pushing social and cultural reforms is the same guy who ordered the killing of a journalist in their Istanbul embassy. So, it is what it is.

We can also choose not to engage in business with them but money talks, apparently.

But to the people in power, only symbols and power are important.

A general statement that is universal across time and geography. Nothing special about the gulf

Do they need anything more? And you mentioned airplanes, but you failed to mention logistics more generally and container shipping, with Jebel Ali port being the third largest (behind LA and Rotterdam) in a list that would exclude East Asia and Singapore. [1] There's also tourism because, yes, people are actually paying money in order to visit places like Dubai, and that's because they like what they see there.

And then there's finance.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_port...?

Can you give any keywords what to look for to read more about this?

There is a formal succession process, but it's been regularly sidestepped for various reasons. So you basically have a real-life Game of Thrones where your family aren't your loyal and trusted confidants, but the exact people you're paranoid of. And for very good reasons. For instance one Saudi king was assassinated by his nephew (who was later publicly decapitated), then his brother took the throne, and so on endlessly.

Who do you think MBS was purging in '17? Other royals. Rich royals. Competition for the throne.

It's just big lanes devoid of cars between the towers devoid of people. And then a small road connecting to the Industrial Area.

It's also governed differently from the others in being an oligarchy. That requirement for consensus-building and internal variation creates robustness; it gave Dubai the room to experiment, for example, with religious moderation.

It's not a view I hold too seriously. But I remember visiting the Emirates and Saudi Arabia--shortly after the Phillipines and India--and thinking to myself that the British were, in their time, far better at nation building than we've (EDIT: America) been in the post-War era.

who does "we" refer to? The Dutch? France?

Sorry, clarified as America. Not aware of any Dutch nation building after WWII. (I'd argue the British also did better than the French.)

The British strategy was far more pragmatic, they kept the local powers in place and played each of them against each other to maintain control over the colonies.

Of course, I'm generalizing but there's a clear difference of ideology that I do think explain the differences between the French and British when it came to managing their colonial empire.

UAE is doing so well for (mainly) 2 reasons:

1) The Shakhbut coup in Abu Dhabi

2) Abu Dhabi and Dubai buried the hatchet to form UAE(there was a lot of bad blood between the 2 states, but because Rashid bin Saeed and Zayed bin Sultan were way above average as far as authoritarians go they managed to avoid stupid conflicts and focused on cashing in on the oil).

Fair enough. And as you describe, it's more a diarchy of Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Nevertheless, structurally different from the absolute monarchies around them.

Furthermore, Saudi has started requiring companies that are operating in Saudi to operate a Saudi office, and won't give tenders to those who are managing the relationship remotely from Dubai now, so companies have started moving staff to Riyadh.

> Nevertheless, structurally different from the absolute monarchies around them

MbS is trying to remake KSA into an Abu Dhabi 2.0, as MbZ was his mentor

[0] - https://www.cnn.com/2009/BUSINESS/12/14/dubai.10.billion.bai...

[1] - https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN1PU1LI/

[2] - https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN22R23G/

I'm not sure if this is satire or not... Religious moderation should be the default, not something to 'experiment' with.

They are monuments to the brilliance of human engineering, allowing millions of humans to live comfortably in the scorching desert heat.

    > Do you also call Amsterdam
    > with its dikes and below sea
    > level, “a monument to man’s
    > arrogance?

1. https://www.floodmap.net/elevation/CountryElevationMap/?ct=N...

My issue is that when the term is used as a pejorative, it more often used with regards to projects in developing countries.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_performance

I see the argument that air conditioning is somehow “wrong” or “unsophisticated” on HN all the time (usually from Europeans) and it’s one of the weirdest things. I see no explanation for it other than racism.

To claim you are somehow more virtuous than Arab people because you use artificial heating instead of artificial cooling is downright hilarious given this context.

At home, it recycles stale, dry air. In urban settings, air-conditioners pump hotter air into the (already) sizzling outside. There are better implementations like district cooling with cold water, but this will require ripping out every single split-aircon unit from every single flat and replacing the ducting, the cooling units, and even the controls.

Governments try to explain everybody they should use less heating, and I personally find comfortable (and reasonable) smaller differences between outside and inside.

Now, when I was in a country with what I think is excessive air conditioning (not middle east, but no use to name it) it annoyed me the huge difference, 38 Celsius outside and 21 Celsius inside.

I will complain about large differential no matter the country. Of course it might limit the activities I can make in some parts of the world (skiing in the desert anybody?), but that's what I find reasonable.

I do not see that. In this thread it is making the point that the cities are extremely expensive to run and not sustainable. I see the same point made about desert cities in the US.

European cities may need heating, but they also tend to have far better supplies of water, better government, and a far more diversified economy. White elephant projects are at least challenged and discussed and are rarely (if ever) on this scale. Even something like Britain's much maligned HS2 is far smaller in absolute cost (maybe by an order of magnitude depending on whose estimates of each you believe), and even more so relative to the population size of the economy.

[1] https://reasonstobecheerful.world/heat-pumps-norway-efficien...

In all seriousness, in those baking desert landscapes, it would even make a considerable amount of sense for cooling costs.

This seems more likely to me as an explanation than hating on people with different taste. Otherwise everyone would hate Japan for example.

[1] https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/#the-scale [2] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/freedom-i... [3] https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2022

In summary, there maybe reasons for an informed person to have an issue with a specific government, there is no reasonable reason to hate on countries because the are adjacent to a government you dislike and lastly the individuals in a country are free to live in reasonable temperatures with their own taste in buildings

I'll call the gulf states Bahrain, Kuwait, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the United Arab Emirates. Which of these would you say has a good record on human rights, personal liberty, and equality?

An issue can be found in any government, how does that move the conversation forward ?

I'll be frank: I have a deep mistrust of any culture present in the Arabian peninsula since about 632 CE.

Nah, it must be racism.

To reiterate, having an issue with a government for a specific reason is informed. Hating an ethic group is racism.

Ps I’m not from there or live there

Not sure if "geographic discrimination" is in any way better than "racism" but using terms correctly is required for good communication.

So if that individuals distrust towards the Arabian peninsula begins in the exact year Islam began to spread, it wouldn't be a stretch to assume that OP is an Islamaphobe (and it would include a number of North African countries as well)

TLDR: OP is using geography as a dog whistle.

It so happens that the large majority of these governments are in Muslim-majority countries, where Islam is the 'state religion' (I have a problem with 'state religions' too). Therefore, a reasonable conclusion: it is that particular religion that demands these of its adherents (and worse, non-adherents), and therefore, I mistrust it.

> a number of North African countries as well

For the record, I have little problem with Tunisia.

Another HN post today motivated me to look up the history of British blasphemy law and it turns out it was not medieval. Criminal blasphemy laws appeared right at the end of the Middle Ages (at least in England and Wales) so are mostly modern. Before that the punishment for blasphemy was excommunication.

> I'll be frank: I have a deep mistrust of any culture present in the Arabian peninsula since about 632 CE.

Enough said. This isn’t an informed opinion