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Posts Tagged ‘UAE’
December 16th, 2009 at 4:55 pm
If It Sounds Too Good to be True, It’s Probably a Sales Pitch from Dubai

It turns out money can buy neither happiness nor certainty.  As information continues to leak out about the desert kingdom’s financial mirage, the overleveraged city state of Dubai is proving to be an object lesson in the importance of free markets.  In about five years’ time the second largest member of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) went from off the map to the center of attention for the world’s glitterati.  In the face of opulence, many disregarded obvious contradictions.

Neo-conservatives were willing to overlook its dictatorial government on the grounds that it promoted an alternative to political Islam.”

Also overlooked were the inhumane conditions inflicted on the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, most from India and Pakistan, imported to construct the place to awe-inspiring effect. Nature was stage-managed at great expense, both financial and environmental: lush golf courses in the desert; a ski hill inside the world’s biggest shopping mall; sand rearranged on offshore islands that replicated a map of the world (with Israel notably absent). No expense was spared to bring celebrities to burnish the Dubai brand—among them Tiger Woods, Roger Federer, and Clinton. Dubai proposed a new oxymoronic economic model: state-owned capitalism. It was a trade-off: personal freedom for the promise of the best “quality of life on the planet,” like George Orwell’s 1984 with Gucci, McDonald’s, and a happy ending.

Yet, the end to Dubai’s financial crisis is far from happy; especially if negotiations with other UAE members stall, and Dubai seeks a bailout – and closer ties with – Iran.  Like security, many people (and nations) will trade their freedom for “guaranteed” prosperity.  Let’s hope that in the wake of Iran’s latest missile test-firing Dubai doesn’t increase the Islamic Republic’s sphere of influence any further down the Arabian Peninsula.

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