The main point is that the UAE (along with Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc.) limits citizenship and government benefits to citizens, and citizenship is basically impossible for immigrants or their descendants to attain. America's immigration model invites in tons of people, but makes it relatively easy for them to become citizens, vote, and become public charges.
An aunt of mine is Indian-origin but has lived her entire life in Dubai; and she will never be an Emirati, legally or culturally. She will always be an Indian from Dubai, as will her descendants
The lack of a path to citizenship is one of the key problems with Brian's account. Those born of foreign parents in the country not citizens. And the workers will be deported if they do not have a job. Not sure the US can even do that.
The other is that the labor market is not free, and I would dispute his argument that the people who come are consistently willing to stay. Menial laborers are often trapped in a form of debt bondage that can be hard to distinguish from slavery. A recruiter tells pretty stories of good working conditions and high pay in a very poor country, the gullible young believe and pay him to get them over there, they actually get terrible working conditions, bad pay, are stuck in debt for the cost to get there, lack resources to get home, and are threatened with prison if they don't pay their debts. And companies often don't pay at all with no legal recourse for these workers. Strikes are illegal.
I lived in another middle eastern country, their health care workers were largely filipina nurses (20+ years ago), and they had serious problems with confiscated passports and salaries that were not paid back then. And they were much better educated than the construction workers building Dubai.
Bryan brushes off the reports of passport withholding as irrelevant since deportation is the punishment for not having a job anyway. But debts are treated very harshly, and that can include the debts incurred to get there or to get home. They can't leave without paying off their debts; people may fear for their lives not working. And there are new suckers to come, so competition does not drive up wages to livable levels. Poor people do not seem to be working and then coming home rich.
So there is a rich native class who can work or not as they prefer, with welfare paid from oil revenues. A middle class of foreign workers with skill and knowledge who have some leverage to get paid and not treated abysmally, but still no long term residence rights. And a working class doing menial labor at very low wages often in some form of debt slavery and limited options to get home.
This is possibly one of the worst cases to use to argue for open borders. It is certainly not a viable option in the US, and most of us would consider it immoral in practice. Unless we could hide it from ourselves as the UAE does so well.
I have heard horror stories of Filipinas being pressured into sex work in Singapore because they owed a LOT of money to the agencies that sponsored their flights and visas. They were free to leave at any time, but they would be in debt, back in the Philippines and it's hard to make up the money to pay back this debt at Filipino wages. Part of the problem was the visa fees. If it was just the flights they had to pay back, it wouldn't be so bad, given that Singapore is pretty close to the Philippines. I don't know if there are any visa fees in the UAE. But I hope they are reasonable and perhaps workers should not have to pay any visa fees for the first 3 months. That would give them a chance to save up and not go into debt.
I have heard horror stories about Qatar, too. You can't work for any employer other than your sponsor. And you can't leave the country unless your sponsor lets you. That's basically slavery!
How does the debt bondage work, if you just leave the country? Seems like it should be pretty hard to collect.
And again: even the people in the worst debt bondage have a phone these days, or know someone with a phone, or can dictate a letter. So why are new arrivals still coming?
Leaving the country isn't trivial without a passport or money. Plane or boat, so you need a ticket and a passport. No one just driving away or taking public transport.
Non payment of debt is a jailable criminal offense - no leaving the country. And with that power available, banks there are much more aggressive about pursuing debtors than they are in the first world countries.
Dynamics are changing, phones are more common, maybe that is enough to end this in the long run. But phones everywhere is still fairly new. And poor young men have always taken great risks to improve their fortune. They hear a mix of stories and lies, some believe, maybe they are getting paid better than at home still, just not what was promised or in the promised conditions, enough believe the worst cases won't happen to them, and for years the flow has continued.
In the meantime, it is a hell of a lot more moral, and makes the overwhelming number of immigrants who do choose to do so a *lot* better off than their alternative to stay in their own country.
The problem is at some point the guest workers, especially the high skilled ones, are going to start demanding a political voice, and the citizens won't be able to kick them out because the guest workers are the only ones who know how to run the economy.
“The problem is at some point the guest workers, especially the high skilled ones, are going to start demanding a political voice, and the citizens won't be able to kick them out because the guest workers are the only ones who know how to run the economy.”
That doesn’t strike me as a bad problem; that strikes me as a win-win opportunity.
Exactly. It’s a temporary arbitrage. It’s completely unworkable as a permanent — not merely long-term, but *permanent* — engine of growth.
Either you accept its impermanence along with the inevitable resulting stagnation, or you pivot to building a more permanent engine of growth that is not dependent on a pair of exhaustible arbitrages (oil and poorer foreigners).
Stagnation from a 20x higher level is far preferable to pathetic near-zero growth from a much lower level. At least for many, many generations of human lifespans.
Imo you are (immorally) allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
The first world should shut its border to most of the third world, including mass deportations of many existing illegals. It should continue economic growth and human advancement, as it has uniquely done for hundreds of years now. If first world scientists one day solve the problem of third world genetics, we can consider changing immigration policy in that future generations from now.
"Is Singapore not scalable?"
Singapore specifically? Obviously not. Have you been to Singapore? Have you seen the cargo ships as far as the eye can see? The whole world can't be a commerce hub. You might as well ask if all of Japan could be the business district of Tokyo.
Singapore is at least more scalable than the UAE. It acted as a lab for how the Han could liberalize, which is what LKY intended. It probably helped a great deal in the development of China to see such an example, but all of China can't be Singapore.
But your suggestion would not make the UAE better off.
Nor IMO would completely shutting borders to legal immigrants make first world countries better off. But admittedly that is a much longer discussion.
And I reject your strongly implied assertion that genetics and IQ are anywhere close to the biggest portion of the problem (which do not misunderstand is different from me claiming that it explains 0% of the differences).
The first world solved the "problem of third world genetics" ages ago. The solution is the Law of Comparative Advantage. In a free market economy, everyone has something to contribute. Even if you have no genetic advantages over anyone else, you have comparative advantage in something.
Mass immigration was one of the main reasons that the first world was able to continue economic growth and human advancement. Without mass immigration the USA would be a small, moderately influential nation instead of a global superpower. Allowing in mass influxes of foreigners from what were (at the time) third world countries transformed the US economy into a powerhouse. Genetics has always been irrelevant, someone only suited for menial tasks can still free up a brighter person to work on more advanced tasks.
Shutting borders and mass deportation are among the worst possible things the US could do if it wants to contribute to economic growth and human advancement. It is stupid to deport a huge chunk of our workforce. It is stupid to deprive ourselves of what future immigrants can contribute, regardless of whether those contributions are large or small, every little bit helps. Immigrants don't cause enough problems to be worth giving up those benefits. If there's anything that the rise of the Trump cult has taught us, it's that the true threat to the fabric of American society isn't low-IQ immigrants, it's populist natives.
I think it's less that the UAE and Singapore models are not scalable and more that people don't want them to be scalable because if they were that would mean that nativists are wrong about everything. The USA and EU have already scaled open borders in other ways, people in the US often live in one state and work in another, people in the EU can often work in countries where they are not citizens. I think people don't want to admit that nativism is 100% stupid and wrong. It is so popular that doing so sounds antidemocratic, people assume it has to have some sort of valid point, but I think the evidence against it is strong enough that we have to.
Putting all of Singapore under the label of Han is pretty silly.
Singapore, especially her modern founding population, was full of dialect groups. (When talking about Chinese 'dialect' is the politically correct way to talk about the different languages in the Sinosphere.)
Singapore and Hong Kong never embarked on Guest Worker programs at those scales and most of the guest workers were fellow Han ethnics and very skilled foreigners. They build up their populations high value skills and allowed a relatively broad degree of political participation compared to the UAE.
Singapore has universal suffrage and free and fair elections. Most of residents have full rights. The PAP's dominance owes mostly to its being very fucking good at governing and Han solidarity.
Even its rightless guest workers (especially those actually living in Singapore and not on ships) are mostly Han co-ethnics from Malaysia/Mainland. It's a somewhat exhaustible resource (as China gets richer and Malaysia gets drained of Chinese, they can't keep importing friendly co-ethnics that are just glad to be there).
If you go on the Singapore government websites you'll find the following:
1) non-citizens are a minority of the populace
2) most non citizens are high/mid skill workers that have minimum income requirements at some above average wage rate for each job category
3) most non-citizens are Han co-ethnics. a lot of the rest are high skilled foreigners.
4) the low skill segment is disproportionately in the shipping industry. they are either living on the ships or temporarily in port. they are technically "Singapore workers", but they aren't really living there on anything resembling a permanent basis.
5) A lot of the domestics are Chinese mainlanders
Keeping 88% of your society as rightless foreigners is a powder keg waiting to explode, especially if you demand more of your citizens talents then luxury resorts paid for with oil money.
It worked out extremely well for the USofA. - Though Dubai will (mostly) disappear in the sand when the oil is gone. Bahrain (first oil pump in the region, mostly depleted today) is already back to backwater (only place in the region where you can buy lots of booze in a shop) . Saudia's post-petrol-age future: similar; nowadays large source of investments into the UAE. Qatar: Probably a tiny bit over UAE in share of foreigners (ca. 90%), there are more Nepalesi than Qatari in Qatar! "As of 2024, the largest expatriate community is Indian, constituting 21.80% of the population, approximately 700,000 people. Bangladesh and Nepal contribute significantly, each making up 12.50%, equivalent to 400,000 individuals.") and as delusional as Saudia: "Qatar is actively pursuing its Qatarization initiative, aiming to increase the employment of Qatari citizens in both public and private sectors. The target is to achieve 50% representation of Qatari citizens in the core sectors."
And how did "open borders" affect those places before they found ways to export oil and (liquified) gas? As unattractive as legally open Spitzbergen/Svalbard is today.
All that said, I do agree with all of Caplan`s statements. Fun fact: thousands of nurses from Philippines work in Saudia (under less than ideal conditions) for a few hundred $ a months. All would pack this evening to swap their jobs there to work in US/UK/Germany for US/UK/German pay.
Oil production accounts for less than 1% of Dubai's current GDP. They managed to take the money they made before, when it was 50%, and they actually quite successfully diversified their economy.
The UAE as a whole only earns 17% of its revenue from oil and gas*. For a native population of about 10% with a sizable sovereign fund, if oil were to disappear, the only people who would be significantly affected in the long run would be blue collar workers in certain sectors.
And Bahrain is not "back to backwater". They're still experiencing solid economic growth
The UAE does not have immigration. It has a guest worker program.
If all immigrants to America had no citizenship rights and were going to go home after a few years, I would have no problem with that, and I think most immigration restrictionists feel the same way.
Sorry Bryan, for a guy who prides himself on clear thinking, this is a clear example of confirmation bias. The Gulf states use oil wealth to buy goods and employ foreigners, that's it. The UAE has the second highest oil reserves per capita in the world.
For countries without gigantic oil reserves, whose main natural resource is the productive native population themselves, importing millions of low-IQ foreigners is not a recipe for success, it's a recipe for impoverishment. See the cost of non-European immigration to the Netherlands for hard figures.
Sorry, imo you are wrong that it’s just about the oil. Even if that obviously was the source of the initial wealth / seed capital.
I have issues with other of Bryan’s arguments here, but it just ain’t all about the oil as you suggest. If it was, all of the UAE’s neighbors would have equally high standards of living for all of their citizens and immigrants, wouldn’t they?
Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil? Why would migrant workers have moved there? Why would international businesses have set up there? Before oil there was fishing and pearl diving and a population with an average IQ below Haiti and Afghanistan.
It's like if I won the lottery, put it all in an index fund and waited for fifty years. Sure, I could then claim that my wealth derives from my investments and not from my lottery winnings, but without the lottery winnings there wouldn't have been anything to invest.
“Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil?”
Rich country? No. middle income? Possibly, but hard to say. Singapore sure demonstrates the possibility.
I already conceded that the oil is/was the seed capital.
But my counterarguments to the rest of your claim are:
- Venezuela
- Nigeria
- Angola
- Iraq
- Libya
- Gabon
- Republic of the Congo
- South Sudan
- Khazakstan
…and similar but not identical: Russia.
And your index fund analogy is faulty, because to live you gotta spend some of the money each year. Take 7% out the first year, and the same amount in real terms each year thereafter, and your money gonna be gone eventually (and sooner, if you have the bad luck to start near a market top).
Good policies and institutions matter. Having oil wealth is IIRC somewhat negatively correlated with long- term per capita income success for nations.
It works because those low-IQ foreigners must have verifiable employment or go home. Period. You lose your job if you get in trouble and the UAE takes crime very seriously, esp if you're non-native.
I think you make a strong point: open borders with extremely limited welfare state options for noncitizens is great, but open borders with lots of welfare state options is bad. I would add “also, you have to enforce basic property laws,” but otherwise I don’t think many people would disagree. I am afraid we are a long way from saying “no state support for immigrants”, however.
That’s a good point as well, although we probably wouldn’t need the level of citizen welfare the UAE has. We seemed to do really well without it for a long time.
I recall Caplan saying in a debate some years ago that many immigrants would be happy to come to the US even with the stipulation they could never vote and never receive welfare benefits. I think that really should be an option, although I can easily see the agreement never being enforced which kind of ruins it. We just can’t have nice things.
Yes, I think the open borders crowd mixes Guest Worker programs with immigrants who within a few years will be full American citizens. They are not the same.
Guest workers may make economic sense, but that is not the same as permanent immigrants.
We tried Prop 187, Jim Crow, and Apartheid. They didn't work.
It's one thing for some Arab dictator city state sitting on a pile of oil to pay central asians and a few white engineers to build ski resorts in the desert, maybe that can work for awhile. It's another to get free democratic societies that have to actually bring out their populations higher skills (you know, the ones generating the real global wealth at scale) to live under such conditions.
Jim Crow and Apartheid laws limited the mobility, personal & political rights of the people living in the country.
The guest worker arrangements are the same. They live in segregated dorms, have tightly controlled lives, and have no political voice.
Even if you could argue that this is good for them, living in the Jim Crow south was better than living in Africa, and people rarely went back to Africa in protest. Apartheid South Africa could keep the lights on and had a better run government. It doesn't matter, the developed world simply finds this arrangement of second class citizenry repugnant and unworkable, it always breaks down in the long run.
So we tried Jim Crow and Apartheid. We tried Prop 187 in CA. They didn't work. If the people are there eventually someone is going to make them citizens with rights, either welfare, voting, or both.
“many immigrants would be happy to come to the US even with the stipulation they could never vote and never receive welfare benefits. I think that really should be an option‘
This is pretty much exactly what a guest worker program is.
If we didn’t have mass *illegal* immigration because one party thinks it in their political interest to do so, we could have a meaningful guest worker program and a sane legal immigration system.
But for all the shit thrown at Trump and Trump’s supporters - *some* of whom are indeed xenophobic and opposed to all immigration - the blame for our lack of a sane legal immigration system needs to be 100% laid at the feet of those who not only refuse to stop illegal immigration but have actively sought and encouraged it.
I don’t know that guest worker is the way to phrase it, as that implies you have to leave as soon as you stop working, i.e. you can’t retire here, but otherwise I agree. Maybe “foreign national” or some similar term indicating that you have right to live and work here but not vote or get government benefits.
I concede there are probably dangers to having some people be second class citizens, but honesty I think the danger is that politicians will want to give them goodies as full citizens, not that people won’t be happy to be a second class citizen in the USA rather than be stuck in the home country.
Yea, why not let people retire in the country, or live there, off savings? They're spending money in the country. The Philippines, for example, allows retirement visas, for people with at least a certain monthly pension or a certain amount of savings. They also let you extend a tourist visa up to three years as long as you behave yourself and pay the fees! I stayed there a year, on Canadian Parental leave.
I think it would be awfully cruel and silly to deport a guest-worker as soon as they lose their job. At least give them a few months to try to find a new one. And let people self-sponsor. Don't tie visas to a single employer!
I suppose it becomes a problem if they live off welfare. So don't give them welfare. I think we're already in agreement on that. Or, if they become homeless. So, maybe we could do hwhat Singapore does: Do "sweeps" of homeless people and force Citizens into shelters (or not, I don't care) and deport homeless foreigners.
That being said, deportation is kinda an expensive and messy business. One keyhole solution I thought of: Require all arriving foreigners to have either: a return/onward ticket or pay a bond equivalent to the price of a return ticket. If they have a credit card, it could simply be a "hold" on their card. If they find the foreigner homeless, they inform them they must leave. If they leave, voluntarily, within 30 days, and can prove that they've left the country, their bond can be reimbursed (perhaps they managed to score tix cheaper than the amount of their bond) or they can ask that their bond be used to purchase tickets. If they don't leave, their bond is forfeited and, presumably, if they are found, they may be forced to leave.
Another idea I had, that left might actually accept: Be federalist. All welfare programs are to be funded at State level. If California wants to offer free housing, food, college and healthcare to all immigrants, go for it! If Texas offers them nothing except a booming economy and job market, good for them!
I suppose this would suck for the Californians who don't like seeing their State going bankrupt, BUT: It wouldn't necessarily turn them against foreign immigrants. Cause moocher immigrants from Texas would be JUST as much to blame as moocher immigrants from Mexico. And, if they don't like it, they can always move to Texas.
Basically no democracy, or welfare state, or chance of ever becoming citizens. Combine that with a strong cultural prerequisite to assimilate and respect the host nation and open borders worked well here. The USA is far too democratic, politically correct, tolerant, generous, and progressive for this model to work (now).
And the USofA has a horrible welfare system. It's broken at every level except the capacity to burn through money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
I am a regular working class Joe and never imagined i would become somewhat of a “world traveler” type. But it happened, albeit the hard way. I became a military contractor working on overseas bases, mostly Afghanistan. It was hard, but the money was good. The companies that hire internationally for these projects (LOGCAP) almost all have a “hub” in Dubai. This is true for me, i worked for two of the big ones. As an American (expat) you are considered “deployed” much like a soldier because many military requirements must be met for one to work “in theater” as they say. So, the first time i left home for overseas work, i was sent to Dubai for a night awaiting my flight to Afghanistan. It was a bit overwhelming that night. I had no experience and literally only an hour or two to peek around. It was relatively fruitless and unenlightening.
However, that ALL changed on my first R&R. The company put us up in a rather opulent hotel for vacations. Typically they provide one night while you wait for your flight to whatever destination, most go home, wherever that might be. I decided to use this opportunity to travel that side of the world and see sights i’d always wanted to see. I had no wife or kids waiting and it’s a LONG ride to and fro. I decided on Cairo, Egypt to see the pyramids, but i digress. Upon my return to Dubai, the company again put us up in this wonderful hotel, in the main lobby a grand piano was surrounded by a pair of spiraling marble staircases going up to the next level where the bars, restaurants and meeting rooms were, glorious chandeliers, the whole nine yards! This wasn’t a particularly expensive hotel either. Dubai is FILLED with places like this. It’s five-star for sure, but nothing like the Burj Al Arab, which is considered the world’s first “seven star” hotel.
My second R&R (i spent a total of five years working in Afghanistan, so i had quite a few nice vacations!) i decided to spend a bit more time there exploring. By my third R&R, i decided to simply take my WHOLE vacation just in Dubai. This was especially nice because the company allowed extra vacation days for “travel time” which i simply rolled into my stay. 😎
From that point forward, i always cushioned whatever travel i was taking with a few days before and and after my travel to stay Dubai. This gave me time to decompress from the stresses of work before i hit the airport again, and time to stock up on necessities i might need for my return to the harsh conditions of living and working in Afghanistan on military bases.
Then, i landed my dream job with another company. I got a promotion in my field and a spot on a base in the UAE, just outside of Dubai at the Emirati air base. That was when COVID-1984 hit us all. We got locked down inside the base. Period. Fortunately, i acquired a slight injury at work there that required me to see a therapist weekly. Weird how bad things can be fortuitous, no? So, i was incredibly lucky to be able to leave the base one day a week. This was the case for most of 2020 until the Army closed the base. (The US Army had a tiny corner inside the Emirati Air Base, i don’t really think they did much except provide “presence” in the area tbh). I was denied my scheduled R&R in 2020 due base closure protocols, but i was able to take my R&R after i was released upon base closing.
I took my R&R in place because travel was VERY sketchy at the time. Some folks went home and couldn’t return to work because of the plandemic restrictions. At the end of my vacation i reported to the company hotel for my new assignment in Iraq. I was scheduled for a “movement” with a group of fellow associates that needed to do some COVID-1984 protocols which included a lockdown inside your hotel room for a period of ten or fourteen days (i don’t recall which). But the lockdown for my group wasn’t scheduled for a whole week yet! I got to spend another week in Dubai, on vacation (sort of) on the company dime until the lockdown process started.
So, i was a bit of an expert on Dubai. I even wrote a page long summary for my expat friends of places to see, things to do and restaurant/hotel recommendations. I found your article to absolutely spot-on in every regard.
However, it must be said that Dubai has its dark side. And it’s not pretty. No place is immune to corruption and human trafficking apparently.
The problem is that if you have a family, you are totally screwed if you get laid off (unless you are Emarati). It's like everyone is on H1B's with no path to becoming a permanent resident at all. I was born and raised there and I have nothing to show for it other than what it says on my Canadian passport.
There is no job security and no retirement possibility. You could be laid off because you happen to work for the government and they need to fill their Emarati employment quotas. This is why many non-Emaratis just end up moving to the US/Canada/Australia anyway, especially high skilled people. It's a great place to make money and kick start a career. The lack of bureaucracy makes life much easier. It is very safe. But every day you are reminded that this sort of life is not meant for you, but for the Emaratis.
Even taking your pro-UAE case at face value, I think it’s more convincing to characterize their “success” as an example of two principles:
(1) The power of gerrymandering,
and
(2) the power of greenfield (yellowfield, in their case?) development.
RE 1, one of the things one may notice about places like UAE, Singapore, and HK is that although they are the beneficiaries of vast nearby populations and hinterlands, they’re politically isolated from the suboptimal policies those hinterlands would impose on them if given a vote. Where NYC has NJ, Pennsylvania, and Missi-freaking-ssippi to contend with WRT its national policy, UAE and other free cities simply don’t.
Within the context of other free cities, well, obviously the successful ones are successful because they implemented better policies. Gdansk has been a free city at various points in its history. Plenty of free cities succeed, only to use that success to pursue “national greatness” projects that tie themselves to a hinterland that hates them and leeches off them, while accusing them of being leeches themselves.
The other part of this story is the greenfield, though (RE 2). This applies in both the policy AND actual land-use context. For example, it’s so insanely difficult to build in NYC because of both the sheer number of other things around it AND the bureaucratic red tape. UAE had neither of those things — per your own testimony, it was a region of glorified fishing villages.
When there are exceedingly few rules, it’s indeed amazing what can be built and how fast by modern industry! America itself went through a similar transformation.
The only real lesson here that the UAE can offer us is to be a reminder of what a simpler regulatory state can accomplish, of what it looks like when there are fewer incumbents benefiting from what Noah Smith coined as “stasis dividends”.
100-150 years out from our formative transformation, a lot of America indeed looks spent, tired, and decrepit. 100-150 years from now, UAE will likely look very similar. The difference, democracy means that for every dumb-AF civilizational mistake we inflict on ourselves like NIMBY, we can learn those lessons and move forward from them, hopefully in the direction of recovering the dynamism that made us great in the first place.
But if UAE doesn’t evolve,doesn’t grapple with what happens when today’s growth becomes tomorrow’s incumbent oligarchs, when today’s immigrants become tomorrow’s native born or mixed population, when Dubai runs out of greenfield and the locals turn to NIMBYism… THAT will be the true test of whether they’ve happened upon some truly innovative social formation, or are just having a greenfield boom.
"The key ingredient of Emirati success: 88% of UAE’s population is foreign-born." This cannot be *the* key ingredient. Open borders might be *a* key ingredient, even a necessary cause of UAE success, but it is not a sufficient cause. Without oil wealth, all of those foreign-born workers would be pointless.
But I agree that good institutions and property rights are indeed more important than that 88% “key ingredient”.
In fairness to Bryan, he didn’t say it was the most important ingredient. In this case “key” pretty clear meant “a very important ingredient not in most other recipes”.
1) I think the leadership of the UAE played its hand as good as anyone could play it. They deserve praise.
2) I don't think the UAE has any lessons to teach the rest of the world.
I would like to imagine Bryan Caplan going on CNN or speaking in front of Congress and saying:
"I want to turn the USA into a dictatorship apartheid state."
How well would this go over? What are the odds that Bryan could rally political will to pass the necessary constitutional amendments to bring about his dictatorship apartheid state?
Now, let's say we could deal with the obvious and insurmountable political problems. It's one thing for a tiny city state full of oil to hire people to build everything for them while they luxuriate in luxury they never build themselves. It's another to turn the entire world economy into such a model. It is, quite frankly, not even possible.
I would think that Bryan would understand this. Real wealth comes from the mind! It's generated by lots and lots of smart people doing productive work. Those smart people want rights and don't want to be ruled by dictators, which have a terrible track record in most of the world (ask how the Chinese like being ruled by Mao or Xi).
It's nice and all that this tiny oil rich dot on the map to let smart people do stuff for oil wealth and get out of the way, but its not something we could model the world political economy on. The global economy can't all be sky resorts in the desert paid for with dead dinosaurs.
It's not even clear how stable it is. When the next crisis comes, how long will the dictatorship last when 88% of the population feels nothing for them and are practically slaves. South Africa couldn't make that work.
"Why would Bryan Caplan want to turn anything into a dictatorship?"
Dictatorships are the only governments that have been able to implement a guest worker program similar to the UAE. They are not compatible with democracy, especially large western democracies.
Further, Bryan has said many times over that he despises democracy and would prefer to be ruled by a small elite. These statements aren't hard to find.
I addressed your comments on Singapore in a different reply.
Some love it. Others not so much. There is rampant human trafficking for sex and actual labor. Many people are conned into making the trip then get their passports held for ransom, criminally. Many more, most likely the majority, are experiencing a life-changing opportunity for real. Yeah, they work hard, yeah they don't get to enjoy the best of Dubai, but it's better than what they can find at home.
A few good things about the UAE: They have a relatively high degree of Freedom of Religion compared to other middle-Eastern countries, especially the KSA. I'd imagine a devout Christian would never really feel "at home" in the KSA. (And they prolly like it that way!)
One thing I thought of: Can a foreigner, despite not being a Citizen, ever feel "at home" in the UAE? I thought about this from a Filipino perspective (as I lived for a year in the Philippines). The answer is: A resounding YES! A Filipino living in the UAE can meet other Filipinos with hwhom they can hang out, speak Tagalog, Bisayas or whatever and share chicken Adobo with. They can worship at Catholic or other Christian churches. Even INC! They don't need to speak Arabic to get by. In fact, English is probably better as most of the population is not Arab, either. (I happen to speak some Arabic, but quickly realized it's pointless in the UAE as I didn't need it to speak to the Russians, Filipinos or Indians I met. I barely met any Arabs.) They have Jollibee and even Mang Inasal! Heck, if I was a Filipino, I think I'd feel much more "at home" in the UAE than most of Canada!
I don't think *I* would ever feel "at home" in the UAE tho. I'm quite outspoken. I enjoy the right to Free Speech and I like to exercise it, limited as it is in Canada. I did consider that the main thing I use my right to Free Speech for is to protest abortion, hwhich is already mostly illegal in the UAE, so hwhat would I have to protest? But I best not kid myself... I'd find SOMETHING to protest and find myself in jail, then deported. 😛
Also, Freedom of Speech is limited in the UAE. In fact, unlike China, Canada or the DPRK, they don't even PRETEND to have freedom of speech. And forget about Freedom of Assembly! And there's torture and disappearances, of course...
I also transferred flights in the UAE. One thing that struck me: I couldn't make a video call through FB Messenger. Hwhy not? Was it censorship? Was the government afraid Facebook messenger video calls could be used to organize protests?
Nope! It's because some Sheik owned one of the major Telcos which sold "video call minutes" for years and was making a tidy profit on that. Video calling through 3rd party apps got in the way of that. So they block the ports.
Perhaps there would be some way around that that i would have figured out if i was in the UAE for longer. But this to me was the essence of Dubai-nomics: economic freedom until you got in the way of some Sheik's business. I was not impressed.
The main point is that the UAE (along with Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, etc.) limits citizenship and government benefits to citizens, and citizenship is basically impossible for immigrants or their descendants to attain. America's immigration model invites in tons of people, but makes it relatively easy for them to become citizens, vote, and become public charges.
An aunt of mine is Indian-origin but has lived her entire life in Dubai; and she will never be an Emirati, legally or culturally. She will always be an Indian from Dubai, as will her descendants
The lack of a path to citizenship is one of the key problems with Brian's account. Those born of foreign parents in the country not citizens. And the workers will be deported if they do not have a job. Not sure the US can even do that.
The other is that the labor market is not free, and I would dispute his argument that the people who come are consistently willing to stay. Menial laborers are often trapped in a form of debt bondage that can be hard to distinguish from slavery. A recruiter tells pretty stories of good working conditions and high pay in a very poor country, the gullible young believe and pay him to get them over there, they actually get terrible working conditions, bad pay, are stuck in debt for the cost to get there, lack resources to get home, and are threatened with prison if they don't pay their debts. And companies often don't pay at all with no legal recourse for these workers. Strikes are illegal.
I lived in another middle eastern country, their health care workers were largely filipina nurses (20+ years ago), and they had serious problems with confiscated passports and salaries that were not paid back then. And they were much better educated than the construction workers building Dubai.
Bryan brushes off the reports of passport withholding as irrelevant since deportation is the punishment for not having a job anyway. But debts are treated very harshly, and that can include the debts incurred to get there or to get home. They can't leave without paying off their debts; people may fear for their lives not working. And there are new suckers to come, so competition does not drive up wages to livable levels. Poor people do not seem to be working and then coming home rich.
So there is a rich native class who can work or not as they prefer, with welfare paid from oil revenues. A middle class of foreign workers with skill and knowledge who have some leverage to get paid and not treated abysmally, but still no long term residence rights. And a working class doing menial labor at very low wages often in some form of debt slavery and limited options to get home.
This is possibly one of the worst cases to use to argue for open borders. It is certainly not a viable option in the US, and most of us would consider it immoral in practice. Unless we could hide it from ourselves as the UAE does so well.
I have heard horror stories of Filipinas being pressured into sex work in Singapore because they owed a LOT of money to the agencies that sponsored their flights and visas. They were free to leave at any time, but they would be in debt, back in the Philippines and it's hard to make up the money to pay back this debt at Filipino wages. Part of the problem was the visa fees. If it was just the flights they had to pay back, it wouldn't be so bad, given that Singapore is pretty close to the Philippines. I don't know if there are any visa fees in the UAE. But I hope they are reasonable and perhaps workers should not have to pay any visa fees for the first 3 months. That would give them a chance to save up and not go into debt.
I have heard horror stories about Qatar, too. You can't work for any employer other than your sponsor. And you can't leave the country unless your sponsor lets you. That's basically slavery!
How does the debt bondage work, if you just leave the country? Seems like it should be pretty hard to collect.
And again: even the people in the worst debt bondage have a phone these days, or know someone with a phone, or can dictate a letter. So why are new arrivals still coming?
Leaving the country isn't trivial without a passport or money. Plane or boat, so you need a ticket and a passport. No one just driving away or taking public transport.
Non payment of debt is a jailable criminal offense - no leaving the country. And with that power available, banks there are much more aggressive about pursuing debtors than they are in the first world countries.
Dynamics are changing, phones are more common, maybe that is enough to end this in the long run. But phones everywhere is still fairly new. And poor young men have always taken great risks to improve their fortune. They hear a mix of stories and lies, some believe, maybe they are getting paid better than at home still, just not what was promised or in the promised conditions, enough believe the worst cases won't happen to them, and for years the flow has continued.
The people offering the opportunities might be lying about conditions, sure. That has always been the case.
But friends and family who have moved ahead of them have no real incentives to entice young men to go, if debt bondage is all that would await them.
I dont think bryan cares about citizenship. He cares about economic wellbeing and living standards.
The right to vote is, if i remember correctly, irrelevant to him
Yeah, it’s amazing how well the first class of citizens can live when you don’t need to worry about the second class.
You entirely miss the point that the second-class residents go there voluntarily because they are better off there than in their home countries.
The differential can’t last forever.
“The differential can’t last forever.”
If you say so.
In the meantime, it is a hell of a lot more moral, and makes the overwhelming number of immigrants who do choose to do so a *lot* better off than their alternative to stay in their own country.
The problem is at some point the guest workers, especially the high skilled ones, are going to start demanding a political voice, and the citizens won't be able to kick them out because the guest workers are the only ones who know how to run the economy.
Invite in other guest workers. Lolz
I don't care whether I have a political voice, I care about how much money I earn. Voting is a waste of time.
Doesn't look like it's happening in the UAE.
“The problem is at some point the guest workers, especially the high skilled ones, are going to start demanding a political voice, and the citizens won't be able to kick them out because the guest workers are the only ones who know how to run the economy.”
That doesn’t strike me as a bad problem; that strikes me as a win-win opportunity.
We get it. It's still not sustainable or scalable. Apartheid states don't work long term and the world can only support so many petrostates.
Exactly. It’s a temporary arbitrage. It’s completely unworkable as a permanent — not merely long-term, but *permanent* — engine of growth.
Either you accept its impermanence along with the inevitable resulting stagnation, or you pivot to building a more permanent engine of growth that is not dependent on a pair of exhaustible arbitrages (oil and poorer foreigners).
Stagnation from a 20x higher level is far preferable to pathetic near-zero growth from a much lower level. At least for many, many generations of human lifespans.
Imo you are (immorally) allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.
You’re gonna hafta unpack that. Your baselines don’t make sense.
Nothing is permanent. The sun will go nova.
Apartheid based on skin color with radically different negative rights is very different than a permanent very large guest worker program.
People should be Free to Choose.
What is your alternative? Closed borders? Open borders with a generous welfare state for everyone physically present in the country?
Is Singapore not scalable?
No one has even mentioned that most of these immigrants are not coming from democracies, let alone high income democracies.
"What is your alternative?"
The first world should shut its border to most of the third world, including mass deportations of many existing illegals. It should continue economic growth and human advancement, as it has uniquely done for hundreds of years now. If first world scientists one day solve the problem of third world genetics, we can consider changing immigration policy in that future generations from now.
"Is Singapore not scalable?"
Singapore specifically? Obviously not. Have you been to Singapore? Have you seen the cargo ships as far as the eye can see? The whole world can't be a commerce hub. You might as well ask if all of Japan could be the business district of Tokyo.
Singapore is at least more scalable than the UAE. It acted as a lab for how the Han could liberalize, which is what LKY intended. It probably helped a great deal in the development of China to see such an example, but all of China can't be Singapore.
I have been to Singapore.
I have never advocated fully open borders.
But your suggestion would not make the UAE better off.
Nor IMO would completely shutting borders to legal immigrants make first world countries better off. But admittedly that is a much longer discussion.
And I reject your strongly implied assertion that genetics and IQ are anywhere close to the biggest portion of the problem (which do not misunderstand is different from me claiming that it explains 0% of the differences).
The first world solved the "problem of third world genetics" ages ago. The solution is the Law of Comparative Advantage. In a free market economy, everyone has something to contribute. Even if you have no genetic advantages over anyone else, you have comparative advantage in something.
Mass immigration was one of the main reasons that the first world was able to continue economic growth and human advancement. Without mass immigration the USA would be a small, moderately influential nation instead of a global superpower. Allowing in mass influxes of foreigners from what were (at the time) third world countries transformed the US economy into a powerhouse. Genetics has always been irrelevant, someone only suited for menial tasks can still free up a brighter person to work on more advanced tasks.
Shutting borders and mass deportation are among the worst possible things the US could do if it wants to contribute to economic growth and human advancement. It is stupid to deport a huge chunk of our workforce. It is stupid to deprive ourselves of what future immigrants can contribute, regardless of whether those contributions are large or small, every little bit helps. Immigrants don't cause enough problems to be worth giving up those benefits. If there's anything that the rise of the Trump cult has taught us, it's that the true threat to the fabric of American society isn't low-IQ immigrants, it's populist natives.
I think it's less that the UAE and Singapore models are not scalable and more that people don't want them to be scalable because if they were that would mean that nativists are wrong about everything. The USA and EU have already scaled open borders in other ways, people in the US often live in one state and work in another, people in the EU can often work in countries where they are not citizens. I think people don't want to admit that nativism is 100% stupid and wrong. It is so popular that doing so sounds antidemocratic, people assume it has to have some sort of valid point, but I think the evidence against it is strong enough that we have to.
Putting all of Singapore under the label of Han is pretty silly.
Singapore, especially her modern founding population, was full of dialect groups. (When talking about Chinese 'dialect' is the politically correct way to talk about the different languages in the Sinosphere.)
But keeping foreigners out works better?
Personally I would never make a new life in a country if I had very little prospect of staying there permanently
How well (or poorly) does this non-citizen live? Is there trickle-down in the UAE?
Better than where they arrived from, there is a reason they keep coming and telling their relatives about it which induces more arrivals.
"Is there trickle-down in the UAE?"
Economics is not zero sum there.
Nor anywhere else. It's super easy to destroy anything, ie make the sum smaller.
Any idea how this might have worked out without their oil wells? Or how it might work out in places that don't have that type of advantage?
“Or how it might work out in places that don't have that type of advantage?“
Worked pretty darn well in Singapore.
And Hong Kong.
Singapore and Hong Kong never embarked on Guest Worker programs at those scales and most of the guest workers were fellow Han ethnics and very skilled foreigners. They build up their populations high value skills and allowed a relatively broad degree of political participation compared to the UAE.
What exactly is your definition of political participation? Especially in Singapore.
Singapore has universal suffrage and free and fair elections. Most of residents have full rights. The PAP's dominance owes mostly to its being very fucking good at governing and Han solidarity.
Even its rightless guest workers (especially those actually living in Singapore and not on ships) are mostly Han co-ethnics from Malaysia/Mainland. It's a somewhat exhaustible resource (as China gets richer and Malaysia gets drained of Chinese, they can't keep importing friendly co-ethnics that are just glad to be there).
Where do we have rightless guest workers?
There's a few guestworkers from China, and a few ethnically Chinese people from Malaysia etc.
But most of our eg construction workers are from Bangladesh and India etc, and most of the maids ain't Chinese.
What's the basis for your claim that most guest workers are Han? Or only the mythical 'rightless' guest worker?
Ok. But was there universal suffrage for immigrants and guest workers 40-50 years ago? What proportion of guest workers have there been?
If you go on the Singapore government websites you'll find the following:
1) non-citizens are a minority of the populace
2) most non citizens are high/mid skill workers that have minimum income requirements at some above average wage rate for each job category
3) most non-citizens are Han co-ethnics. a lot of the rest are high skilled foreigners.
4) the low skill segment is disproportionately in the shipping industry. they are either living on the ships or temporarily in port. they are technically "Singapore workers", but they aren't really living there on anything resembling a permanent basis.
5) A lot of the domestics are Chinese mainlanders
Keeping 88% of your society as rightless foreigners is a powder keg waiting to explode, especially if you demand more of your citizens talents then luxury resorts paid for with oil money.
It worked out extremely well for the USofA. - Though Dubai will (mostly) disappear in the sand when the oil is gone. Bahrain (first oil pump in the region, mostly depleted today) is already back to backwater (only place in the region where you can buy lots of booze in a shop) . Saudia's post-petrol-age future: similar; nowadays large source of investments into the UAE. Qatar: Probably a tiny bit over UAE in share of foreigners (ca. 90%), there are more Nepalesi than Qatari in Qatar! "As of 2024, the largest expatriate community is Indian, constituting 21.80% of the population, approximately 700,000 people. Bangladesh and Nepal contribute significantly, each making up 12.50%, equivalent to 400,000 individuals.") and as delusional as Saudia: "Qatar is actively pursuing its Qatarization initiative, aiming to increase the employment of Qatari citizens in both public and private sectors. The target is to achieve 50% representation of Qatari citizens in the core sectors."
And how did "open borders" affect those places before they found ways to export oil and (liquified) gas? As unattractive as legally open Spitzbergen/Svalbard is today.
All that said, I do agree with all of Caplan`s statements. Fun fact: thousands of nurses from Philippines work in Saudia (under less than ideal conditions) for a few hundred $ a months. All would pack this evening to swap their jobs there to work in US/UK/Germany for US/UK/German pay.
Oil production accounts for less than 1% of Dubai's current GDP. They managed to take the money they made before, when it was 50%, and they actually quite successfully diversified their economy.
The UAE as a whole only earns 17% of its revenue from oil and gas*. For a native population of about 10% with a sizable sovereign fund, if oil were to disappear, the only people who would be significantly affected in the long run would be blue collar workers in certain sectors.
And Bahrain is not "back to backwater". They're still experiencing solid economic growth
* https://www.statista.com/statistics/1143052/uae-distribution-of-real-gdp-by-sector/#:~:text=In%202020%2C%20the%20extractive%20industries,closely%20at%20approximately%2013.6%20perce
I worked 5 years in Saudia and visited Bahrain and its booze shop. I stand by "backwater". Also: bordello.
The UAE does not have immigration. It has a guest worker program.
If all immigrants to America had no citizenship rights and were going to go home after a few years, I would have no problem with that, and I think most immigration restrictionists feel the same way.
Yeah, there's no welfare for foreigners. None. Zip. Nada. If you lose your job, you go home.
Well,. people like Bryan Caplan and me would see that as a vast improvement over the status quo.
You mean like Prop 187?
We aren't a petro city state run by some dictator, and who knows how long that will last. These theoretical are meaningless.
Are they really going home "after a few years" though?
I don’t think the lack of current enforcement of the death penalty for apostasy is all that comforting.
ctrl-f 'Oil' - No results
Sorry Bryan, for a guy who prides himself on clear thinking, this is a clear example of confirmation bias. The Gulf states use oil wealth to buy goods and employ foreigners, that's it. The UAE has the second highest oil reserves per capita in the world.
For countries without gigantic oil reserves, whose main natural resource is the productive native population themselves, importing millions of low-IQ foreigners is not a recipe for success, it's a recipe for impoverishment. See the cost of non-European immigration to the Netherlands for hard figures.
Sorry, imo you are wrong that it’s just about the oil. Even if that obviously was the source of the initial wealth / seed capital.
I have issues with other of Bryan’s arguments here, but it just ain’t all about the oil as you suggest. If it was, all of the UAE’s neighbors would have equally high standards of living for all of their citizens and immigrants, wouldn’t they?
Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil? Why would migrant workers have moved there? Why would international businesses have set up there? Before oil there was fishing and pearl diving and a population with an average IQ below Haiti and Afghanistan.
It's like if I won the lottery, put it all in an index fund and waited for fifty years. Sure, I could then claim that my wealth derives from my investments and not from my lottery winnings, but without the lottery winnings there wouldn't have been anything to invest.
“Do you think it would have been possible for the UAE to become a rich (or even middle-income) country without the oil?”
Rich country? No. middle income? Possibly, but hard to say. Singapore sure demonstrates the possibility.
I already conceded that the oil is/was the seed capital.
But my counterarguments to the rest of your claim are:
- Venezuela
- Nigeria
- Angola
- Iraq
- Libya
- Gabon
- Republic of the Congo
- South Sudan
- Khazakstan
…and similar but not identical: Russia.
And your index fund analogy is faulty, because to live you gotta spend some of the money each year. Take 7% out the first year, and the same amount in real terms each year thereafter, and your money gonna be gone eventually (and sooner, if you have the bad luck to start near a market top).
Good policies and institutions matter. Having oil wealth is IIRC somewhat negatively correlated with long- term per capita income success for nations.
It works because those low-IQ foreigners must have verifiable employment or go home. Period. You lose your job if you get in trouble and the UAE takes crime very seriously, esp if you're non-native.
“The UAE has the second highest oil reserves per capita in the world.”
Even this statement betrays a lack of understanding.
You can only get to “proven reserves” by investing a ton in drilling, analysis, etc.
Yes, proven reserves aren't really about geology, but about short term economics.
You only go out and 'prove' reserves when you need them.
See https://www.adamsmith.org/research/the-no-breakfast-fallacy
"non-European immigration to the Netherlands for hard figures"
A country doesn't have to pay out all that welfare as a condition of having low-IQ immigrants. It was a choice the Netherlands made.
I think you make a strong point: open borders with extremely limited welfare state options for noncitizens is great, but open borders with lots of welfare state options is bad. I would add “also, you have to enforce basic property laws,” but otherwise I don’t think many people would disagree. I am afraid we are a long way from saying “no state support for immigrants”, however.
Agreed. And don’t forget massive revenues from fossil fuels and virtually impossible for guest workers to get citizenship.
That’s a good point as well, although we probably wouldn’t need the level of citizen welfare the UAE has. We seemed to do really well without it for a long time.
I recall Caplan saying in a debate some years ago that many immigrants would be happy to come to the US even with the stipulation they could never vote and never receive welfare benefits. I think that really should be an option, although I can easily see the agreement never being enforced which kind of ruins it. We just can’t have nice things.
Yes, I think the open borders crowd mixes Guest Worker programs with immigrants who within a few years will be full American citizens. They are not the same.
Guest workers may make economic sense, but that is not the same as permanent immigrants.
We tried Prop 187, Jim Crow, and Apartheid. They didn't work.
It's one thing for some Arab dictator city state sitting on a pile of oil to pay central asians and a few white engineers to build ski resorts in the desert, maybe that can work for awhile. It's another to get free democratic societies that have to actually bring out their populations higher skills (you know, the ones generating the real global wealth at scale) to live under such conditions.
What do Jim Crow laws and apartheid etc have to do with a guest worker programme?
What are you trying to imply? Just spell it out.
Jim Crow and Apartheid laws limited the mobility, personal & political rights of the people living in the country.
The guest worker arrangements are the same. They live in segregated dorms, have tightly controlled lives, and have no political voice.
Even if you could argue that this is good for them, living in the Jim Crow south was better than living in Africa, and people rarely went back to Africa in protest. Apartheid South Africa could keep the lights on and had a better run government. It doesn't matter, the developed world simply finds this arrangement of second class citizenry repugnant and unworkable, it always breaks down in the long run.
So we tried Jim Crow and Apartheid. We tried Prop 187 in CA. They didn't work. If the people are there eventually someone is going to make them citizens with rights, either welfare, voting, or both.
“many immigrants would be happy to come to the US even with the stipulation they could never vote and never receive welfare benefits. I think that really should be an option‘
This is pretty much exactly what a guest worker program is.
If we didn’t have mass *illegal* immigration because one party thinks it in their political interest to do so, we could have a meaningful guest worker program and a sane legal immigration system.
But for all the shit thrown at Trump and Trump’s supporters - *some* of whom are indeed xenophobic and opposed to all immigration - the blame for our lack of a sane legal immigration system needs to be 100% laid at the feet of those who not only refuse to stop illegal immigration but have actively sought and encouraged it.
I don’t know that guest worker is the way to phrase it, as that implies you have to leave as soon as you stop working, i.e. you can’t retire here, but otherwise I agree. Maybe “foreign national” or some similar term indicating that you have right to live and work here but not vote or get government benefits.
I concede there are probably dangers to having some people be second class citizens, but honesty I think the danger is that politicians will want to give them goodies as full citizens, not that people won’t be happy to be a second class citizen in the USA rather than be stuck in the home country.
Yea, why not let people retire in the country, or live there, off savings? They're spending money in the country. The Philippines, for example, allows retirement visas, for people with at least a certain monthly pension or a certain amount of savings. They also let you extend a tourist visa up to three years as long as you behave yourself and pay the fees! I stayed there a year, on Canadian Parental leave.
I think it would be awfully cruel and silly to deport a guest-worker as soon as they lose their job. At least give them a few months to try to find a new one. And let people self-sponsor. Don't tie visas to a single employer!
I suppose it becomes a problem if they live off welfare. So don't give them welfare. I think we're already in agreement on that. Or, if they become homeless. So, maybe we could do hwhat Singapore does: Do "sweeps" of homeless people and force Citizens into shelters (or not, I don't care) and deport homeless foreigners.
That being said, deportation is kinda an expensive and messy business. One keyhole solution I thought of: Require all arriving foreigners to have either: a return/onward ticket or pay a bond equivalent to the price of a return ticket. If they have a credit card, it could simply be a "hold" on their card. If they find the foreigner homeless, they inform them they must leave. If they leave, voluntarily, within 30 days, and can prove that they've left the country, their bond can be reimbursed (perhaps they managed to score tix cheaper than the amount of their bond) or they can ask that their bond be used to purchase tickets. If they don't leave, their bond is forfeited and, presumably, if they are found, they may be forced to leave.
Another idea I had, that left might actually accept: Be federalist. All welfare programs are to be funded at State level. If California wants to offer free housing, food, college and healthcare to all immigrants, go for it! If Texas offers them nothing except a booming economy and job market, good for them!
I suppose this would suck for the Californians who don't like seeing their State going bankrupt, BUT: It wouldn't necessarily turn them against foreign immigrants. Cause moocher immigrants from Texas would be JUST as much to blame as moocher immigrants from Mexico. And, if they don't like it, they can always move to Texas.
Basically no democracy, or welfare state, or chance of ever becoming citizens. Combine that with a strong cultural prerequisite to assimilate and respect the host nation and open borders worked well here. The USA is far too democratic, politically correct, tolerant, generous, and progressive for this model to work (now).
True, it's not immigration if they're guest workers who are going to return home after a few years.
…or even return home never.
But it is indeed a win-win economically for all parties. If it wasn’t, the immigrants wouldn’t come.
As long as you have verifiable employment. Otherwise you simply *must* go home.
And the USofA has a horrible welfare system. It's broken at every level except the capacity to burn through money like a drunken sailor on shore leave.
I also had a love affair with Dubai.
I am a regular working class Joe and never imagined i would become somewhat of a “world traveler” type. But it happened, albeit the hard way. I became a military contractor working on overseas bases, mostly Afghanistan. It was hard, but the money was good. The companies that hire internationally for these projects (LOGCAP) almost all have a “hub” in Dubai. This is true for me, i worked for two of the big ones. As an American (expat) you are considered “deployed” much like a soldier because many military requirements must be met for one to work “in theater” as they say. So, the first time i left home for overseas work, i was sent to Dubai for a night awaiting my flight to Afghanistan. It was a bit overwhelming that night. I had no experience and literally only an hour or two to peek around. It was relatively fruitless and unenlightening.
However, that ALL changed on my first R&R. The company put us up in a rather opulent hotel for vacations. Typically they provide one night while you wait for your flight to whatever destination, most go home, wherever that might be. I decided to use this opportunity to travel that side of the world and see sights i’d always wanted to see. I had no wife or kids waiting and it’s a LONG ride to and fro. I decided on Cairo, Egypt to see the pyramids, but i digress. Upon my return to Dubai, the company again put us up in this wonderful hotel, in the main lobby a grand piano was surrounded by a pair of spiraling marble staircases going up to the next level where the bars, restaurants and meeting rooms were, glorious chandeliers, the whole nine yards! This wasn’t a particularly expensive hotel either. Dubai is FILLED with places like this. It’s five-star for sure, but nothing like the Burj Al Arab, which is considered the world’s first “seven star” hotel.
My second R&R (i spent a total of five years working in Afghanistan, so i had quite a few nice vacations!) i decided to spend a bit more time there exploring. By my third R&R, i decided to simply take my WHOLE vacation just in Dubai. This was especially nice because the company allowed extra vacation days for “travel time” which i simply rolled into my stay. 😎
From that point forward, i always cushioned whatever travel i was taking with a few days before and and after my travel to stay Dubai. This gave me time to decompress from the stresses of work before i hit the airport again, and time to stock up on necessities i might need for my return to the harsh conditions of living and working in Afghanistan on military bases.
Then, i landed my dream job with another company. I got a promotion in my field and a spot on a base in the UAE, just outside of Dubai at the Emirati air base. That was when COVID-1984 hit us all. We got locked down inside the base. Period. Fortunately, i acquired a slight injury at work there that required me to see a therapist weekly. Weird how bad things can be fortuitous, no? So, i was incredibly lucky to be able to leave the base one day a week. This was the case for most of 2020 until the Army closed the base. (The US Army had a tiny corner inside the Emirati Air Base, i don’t really think they did much except provide “presence” in the area tbh). I was denied my scheduled R&R in 2020 due base closure protocols, but i was able to take my R&R after i was released upon base closing.
I took my R&R in place because travel was VERY sketchy at the time. Some folks went home and couldn’t return to work because of the plandemic restrictions. At the end of my vacation i reported to the company hotel for my new assignment in Iraq. I was scheduled for a “movement” with a group of fellow associates that needed to do some COVID-1984 protocols which included a lockdown inside your hotel room for a period of ten or fourteen days (i don’t recall which). But the lockdown for my group wasn’t scheduled for a whole week yet! I got to spend another week in Dubai, on vacation (sort of) on the company dime until the lockdown process started.
So, i was a bit of an expert on Dubai. I even wrote a page long summary for my expat friends of places to see, things to do and restaurant/hotel recommendations. I found your article to absolutely spot-on in every regard.
However, it must be said that Dubai has its dark side. And it’s not pretty. No place is immune to corruption and human trafficking apparently.
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
The problem is that if you have a family, you are totally screwed if you get laid off (unless you are Emarati). It's like everyone is on H1B's with no path to becoming a permanent resident at all. I was born and raised there and I have nothing to show for it other than what it says on my Canadian passport.
There is no job security and no retirement possibility. You could be laid off because you happen to work for the government and they need to fill their Emarati employment quotas. This is why many non-Emaratis just end up moving to the US/Canada/Australia anyway, especially high skilled people. It's a great place to make money and kick start a career. The lack of bureaucracy makes life much easier. It is very safe. But every day you are reminded that this sort of life is not meant for you, but for the Emaratis.
Even taking your pro-UAE case at face value, I think it’s more convincing to characterize their “success” as an example of two principles:
(1) The power of gerrymandering,
and
(2) the power of greenfield (yellowfield, in their case?) development.
RE 1, one of the things one may notice about places like UAE, Singapore, and HK is that although they are the beneficiaries of vast nearby populations and hinterlands, they’re politically isolated from the suboptimal policies those hinterlands would impose on them if given a vote. Where NYC has NJ, Pennsylvania, and Missi-freaking-ssippi to contend with WRT its national policy, UAE and other free cities simply don’t.
Within the context of other free cities, well, obviously the successful ones are successful because they implemented better policies. Gdansk has been a free city at various points in its history. Plenty of free cities succeed, only to use that success to pursue “national greatness” projects that tie themselves to a hinterland that hates them and leeches off them, while accusing them of being leeches themselves.
The other part of this story is the greenfield, though (RE 2). This applies in both the policy AND actual land-use context. For example, it’s so insanely difficult to build in NYC because of both the sheer number of other things around it AND the bureaucratic red tape. UAE had neither of those things — per your own testimony, it was a region of glorified fishing villages.
When there are exceedingly few rules, it’s indeed amazing what can be built and how fast by modern industry! America itself went through a similar transformation.
The only real lesson here that the UAE can offer us is to be a reminder of what a simpler regulatory state can accomplish, of what it looks like when there are fewer incumbents benefiting from what Noah Smith coined as “stasis dividends”.
100-150 years out from our formative transformation, a lot of America indeed looks spent, tired, and decrepit. 100-150 years from now, UAE will likely look very similar. The difference, democracy means that for every dumb-AF civilizational mistake we inflict on ourselves like NIMBY, we can learn those lessons and move forward from them, hopefully in the direction of recovering the dynamism that made us great in the first place.
But if UAE doesn’t evolve,doesn’t grapple with what happens when today’s growth becomes tomorrow’s incumbent oligarchs, when today’s immigrants become tomorrow’s native born or mixed population, when Dubai runs out of greenfield and the locals turn to NIMBYism… THAT will be the true test of whether they’ve happened upon some truly innovative social formation, or are just having a greenfield boom.
"The key ingredient of Emirati success: 88% of UAE’s population is foreign-born." This cannot be *the* key ingredient. Open borders might be *a* key ingredient, even a necessary cause of UAE success, but it is not a sufficient cause. Without oil wealth, all of those foreign-born workers would be pointless.
…well, Singapore.
But I agree that good institutions and property rights are indeed more important than that 88% “key ingredient”.
In fairness to Bryan, he didn’t say it was the most important ingredient. In this case “key” pretty clear meant “a very important ingredient not in most other recipes”.
Funny enough, Singapore has a very sizeable oil industry. It's just that we refine other people's oil for them, and trade it.
1) I think the leadership of the UAE played its hand as good as anyone could play it. They deserve praise.
2) I don't think the UAE has any lessons to teach the rest of the world.
I would like to imagine Bryan Caplan going on CNN or speaking in front of Congress and saying:
"I want to turn the USA into a dictatorship apartheid state."
How well would this go over? What are the odds that Bryan could rally political will to pass the necessary constitutional amendments to bring about his dictatorship apartheid state?
Now, let's say we could deal with the obvious and insurmountable political problems. It's one thing for a tiny city state full of oil to hire people to build everything for them while they luxuriate in luxury they never build themselves. It's another to turn the entire world economy into such a model. It is, quite frankly, not even possible.
I would think that Bryan would understand this. Real wealth comes from the mind! It's generated by lots and lots of smart people doing productive work. Those smart people want rights and don't want to be ruled by dictators, which have a terrible track record in most of the world (ask how the Chinese like being ruled by Mao or Xi).
It's nice and all that this tiny oil rich dot on the map to let smart people do stuff for oil wealth and get out of the way, but its not something we could model the world political economy on. The global economy can't all be sky resorts in the desert paid for with dead dinosaurs.
It's not even clear how stable it is. When the next crisis comes, how long will the dictatorship last when 88% of the population feels nothing for them and are practically slaves. South Africa couldn't make that work.
Why would Bryan Caplan want to turn anything into a dictatorship? Huh? And where has he ever been in favour of something as silly as apartheid?
Why did you make up these things? Just like elsewhere your made up 'facts' about Singapore.
"Why would Bryan Caplan want to turn anything into a dictatorship?"
Dictatorships are the only governments that have been able to implement a guest worker program similar to the UAE. They are not compatible with democracy, especially large western democracies.
Further, Bryan has said many times over that he despises democracy and would prefer to be ruled by a small elite. These statements aren't hard to find.
I addressed your comments on Singapore in a different reply.
You should ask the guest workers how much they like it there. It's easy to be all giltz and glam if you're there on a glorified layover.
Some love it. Others not so much. There is rampant human trafficking for sex and actual labor. Many people are conned into making the trip then get their passports held for ransom, criminally. Many more, most likely the majority, are experiencing a life-changing opportunity for real. Yeah, they work hard, yeah they don't get to enjoy the best of Dubai, but it's better than what they can find at home.
A few good things about the UAE: They have a relatively high degree of Freedom of Religion compared to other middle-Eastern countries, especially the KSA. I'd imagine a devout Christian would never really feel "at home" in the KSA. (And they prolly like it that way!)
One thing I thought of: Can a foreigner, despite not being a Citizen, ever feel "at home" in the UAE? I thought about this from a Filipino perspective (as I lived for a year in the Philippines). The answer is: A resounding YES! A Filipino living in the UAE can meet other Filipinos with hwhom they can hang out, speak Tagalog, Bisayas or whatever and share chicken Adobo with. They can worship at Catholic or other Christian churches. Even INC! They don't need to speak Arabic to get by. In fact, English is probably better as most of the population is not Arab, either. (I happen to speak some Arabic, but quickly realized it's pointless in the UAE as I didn't need it to speak to the Russians, Filipinos or Indians I met. I barely met any Arabs.) They have Jollibee and even Mang Inasal! Heck, if I was a Filipino, I think I'd feel much more "at home" in the UAE than most of Canada!
I don't think *I* would ever feel "at home" in the UAE tho. I'm quite outspoken. I enjoy the right to Free Speech and I like to exercise it, limited as it is in Canada. I did consider that the main thing I use my right to Free Speech for is to protest abortion, hwhich is already mostly illegal in the UAE, so hwhat would I have to protest? But I best not kid myself... I'd find SOMETHING to protest and find myself in jail, then deported. 😛
Also, Freedom of Speech is limited in the UAE. In fact, unlike China, Canada or the DPRK, they don't even PRETEND to have freedom of speech. And forget about Freedom of Assembly! And there's torture and disappearances, of course...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Arab_Emirates
I didn't witness these things first hand hwhen I was in the UAE, but that doesn't mean they don't happen.
I also transferred flights in the UAE. One thing that struck me: I couldn't make a video call through FB Messenger. Hwhy not? Was it censorship? Was the government afraid Facebook messenger video calls could be used to organize protests?
Nope! It's because some Sheik owned one of the major Telcos which sold "video call minutes" for years and was making a tidy profit on that. Video calling through 3rd party apps got in the way of that. So they block the ports.
Perhaps there would be some way around that that i would have figured out if i was in the UAE for longer. But this to me was the essence of Dubai-nomics: economic freedom until you got in the way of some Sheik's business. I was not impressed.