[HN Gopher] Tech companies are flocking to the Middle East
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Tech companies are flocking to the Middle East
Author : marban
Score : 114 points
Date : 2024-05-14 13:39 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| Silicon Valley was once open and collaborative until Apple was
| gifted the gui from xerox and Microsoft took it from Apple.
| jmspring wrote:
| That's a shallow take. The Bay Area used to have a plethora of
| different types of companies and innovation. Sadly social media
| and ad companies took over.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Google AdSense became a load-bearing pillar of the Internet
| before we realized what that meant, and now we (seemingly)
| can't get rid of it. Every new product is Yet Another free
| service with a paid subscription tier, which will get more
| expensive, and the free tier is ad supported. Then the ads
| get more egregious. Then the free tier becomes a cheap, ad
| supported tier. Then the ads infiltrate the original paid
| tier. Then a new service with a fresh round of VC funding
| sets up to be the "ad free" version of the service that's now
| infested with ads, and as soon as their AWS bills creep up,
| the ads enter the new service, but hey there's a cheap
| subscription if you don't want ads...
|
| Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
| drawkward wrote:
| 1. All advertising is spam.
|
| 2. Advertising is a virus or tumor that will consume all
| available space in an ecosystem until there is no non-ad
| content left; it ultimately kills its host.
| fallingknife wrote:
| HN has advertisement. It has the sponsored hiring posts
| from YC, Show HN posts to projects, and the monthly who
| is hiring / wants to be hired posts, which are all
| advertisements. Seems far from cancerous.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| HN is also not profitable and is not driven to be so. I
| don't think it's the ads in and of themselves that's the
| cancer, but rather that in order to make money, you need
| just shit-tons of the things. And as the number of ads
| goes up the amount of attention they get drops which just
| demands more ads to offset the lower-valued ones.
|
| That being said, I absolutely vibe with the notion of ads
| being cancer. I would classify personally HN's "ads" as
| you describe as less advertisements and more just posted
| notices of things relevant to the community. I don't
| suspect money changes hands for those to be put up which
| I would personally classify as the line between the two.
| And, more importantly, they are likely to be relevant to
| a fair chunk of the users here, and for those they
| aren't, they're ignored easily enough too.
| fallingknife wrote:
| HN is only able to bet be profitable because it is backed
| by a company that is. And if you combine "posted notices
| of things relevant to the community" with a commercial
| intent, that is basically the definition of ads.
|
| Also, when you say relevant to the community, what
| exactly is the definition of that? A job posting on "who
| is hiring" is likely to be relevant to maybe 0.001% of HN
| readers. If Apple put a big banner on the site saying "HN
| users get $100 off a MBP," I bet a much higher percentage
| of users would click on that (I would). But nobody would
| ever deny that is an ad. So I don't think community
| relevance is a great way to determine it. That community
| relevance factor is exactly what advertisers pay so much
| to targeted ad companies for anyway.
|
| I do find ads annoying myself and use ad blockers to get
| rid of them. But I take exception to the idea that they
| are this cancerous destroying force. Published media has
| been an advertising platform since well before the
| internet and I just don't see a feasible way that
| business model can be replaced just because the medium is
| now the internet. Yes, there is subscription revenue, but
| even newspapers back in the day had ads on every page.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > HN is only able to bet be profitable because it is
| backed by a company that is.
|
| I mean, yes, but also no. We had pages upon pages of
| unprofitable websites once. There was a time, believe it
| or not, when all kinds of people setup all kinds of
| websites, with no expectation whatsoever of making money
| off of them. I for one hosted a niche phpBB board for
| years on end at my own expense, offset only by occasional
| donations from the community we built.
|
| > And if you combine "posted notices of things relevant
| to the community" with a commercial intent, that is
| basically the definition of ads.
|
| Well, again, yes and no. I think there's a nuance there.
| A job posting for example does have commercial intent,
| but at the same time, it's a mutually beneficial
| relationship (hopefully anyway) for both the entity and
| the employee. I would much rather see job ads in a place
| like this than, I dunno, weight loss drugs and erection
| pills.
|
| > Also, when you say relevant to the community, what
| exactly is the definition of that? A job posting on "who
| is hiring" is likely to be relevant to maybe 0.001% of HN
| readers.
|
| I think it's _much_ higher than that. Just because you
| 're not unemployed doesn't mean you wouldn't be
| interested in a job posting. People move companies all
| the time.
|
| > If Apple put a big banner on the site saying "HN users
| get $100 off a MBP," I bet a much higher percentage of
| users would click on that (I would). But nobody would
| ever deny that is an ad.
|
| But, if the community overall benefits from that, even if
| that benefit is nothing more significant than a cheaper
| mac, I'd say that's an overall win for all involved.
|
| > So I don't think community relevance is a great way to
| determine it. That community relevance factor is exactly
| what advertisers pay so much to targeted ad companies for
| anyway.
|
| I'm not saying an ad is _good_ because it 's relevant.
| I'm saying an ad is less irritating if it's relevant.
| That's why I find most ads so grating, because they are
| for products I have zero interest in and they are
| occupying space and attention that would be better filled
| with something I'm at least vaguely interested in.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Newspapers no longer need to perform the overhead of
| printing and distributing which was a massive cost to the
| news org. They can also now sell to the world vs just the
| local market they can deliver papers to. So not only have
| their costs been lowered their customer base has expanded
| quite a bit in theory. Why should we therefore expect to
| see ads on subscriptions?
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| HN itself is the ad for YC and a pretty effective one
| too.
| Hunpeter wrote:
| In what sense is it effective? I'd been lurking here for
| months before I learned that YC was a company and it ran
| this place. (Then again I guess I'm not in any sort of
| relevant target group).
| fallingknife wrote:
| Still does. Yes, two of the biggest are social media / ads,
| but out of all the engineers I know in the Bay Area only a
| small fraction work at ad / social media companies.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yes, Silicon Valley now bears little resemblance to Silicon
| Valley during its heyday in most ways.
| deadbabe wrote:
| What was it like back then?
| bayindirh wrote:
| Two words: "Xerox PARC".
| michaelt wrote:
| Well, the American tech industry as always had some big
| corporate players who are more than happy to sell census
| counting and alphabetization equipment to the third reich,
| and won't look too closely at what they're doing with it - so
| long as it's profitable and complies with local laws. So we
| shouldn't pretend there was some glorious golden age.
|
| But there was a time when SV was a lot more passionate and
| freewheeling, and beliefs like "information wants to be free"
| were a lot more widely repeated.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Isn't "information wants to be free" the rallying cry of
| hackers who want to leak all private data?
| JohnFen wrote:
| Not really. That rallying cry was subverted by crackers,
| but to hackers it means something very different.
| eesmith wrote:
| I think this view is only of the hacker subculture of SV in
| the 1970s.
|
| I don't think it was shared by the semiconductor industry
| which gave SV it name, nor the defense industry which was
| also there.
| michaelt wrote:
| Right, but a lot of modern SV companies like to pretend
| they're descended from the hacker subculture.
|
| Just look at the name of this website :)
| dekhn wrote:
| SV has always been heavily dependent on government spending-
| military or otherwise. I see no real change, other than perhaps
| more people are aware of the sausage making process.
| JohnFen wrote:
| The change I see is a cultural one. At its peak, the SV crowd
| had a very strong interest in doing cool things that could
| improve aspects of the world. That subcurrent still exists,
| but it is largely overshadowed by a stronger interest in
| making as much money as possible, as quickly as possible.
| dekhn wrote:
| I dunno, I read Hackers back in the late 80s and it sure
| seemed like SV was chasing money... I believe Levy used the
| term "Croesus Mode" to describe the mental model.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Sure, there has always been that subset who is only in it
| for the money. The change I see is that what used to be a
| subset is now the dominant faction.
|
| This matters because it affects what sorts of products
| come out of SV. These days, most of the products are
| about extracting maximal dollars from customers. In the
| old days, there was a genuine interest in making great
| products rather than products that prioritize maximize
| dollar extraction.
|
| Also, the nature of the dev population has changed. These
| days, a very large percentage of SV devs chose that line
| of work specifically because it's lucrative. Before, a
| very large percentage of SV devs chose that line of work
| because they loved being devs.
|
| At least, that's what the change looks like to me. I
| could be wrong. But one thing that is absolutely obvious
| is that SV today is very different than SV back when it
| was in peak form.
| lordleft wrote:
| Most alarmingly, many of the fruits of SV can be used to make
| dictatorships even more capable in crushing dissenters and
| extending the aegis of state into everyday life. Technology is
| morally neutral, it can be used for ill as well as good, and our
| worship of it as a panacea has blinded us to this possibility
| fidotron wrote:
| It is worse than that: the most efficient way to make money in
| SV is to make the tools for enabling totalitarianism while
| covering them in a twee veneer of folksiness so people don't
| notice.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Add in the time tested classic of simultaneously gaslighting
| the customers by claiming to be doing it for their own good.
| holonsphere wrote:
| While building the knowledge, skills, and staff required to
| apply these exact same tools towards ordinary americans.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the most efficient way to make money in SV is to make the
| tools for enabling totalitarianism_
|
| Any specificity to this example that doesn't apply to any
| game-changing technology?
| fidotron wrote:
| You mean the Unabomber was right? Technology inevitably
| leads to totalitarianism?
|
| Cars are not inherently tools of government, it's just
| they've been regulated such that that is their direction of
| development. Personal computers were similarly not that way
| either.
|
| The key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement
| to be connected to the internet, after which it's game
| over.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _key problem in both cases is imposing the requirement
| to be connected to the internet, after which it 's game
| over_
|
| My point is we can do this for anything. Clocks enabled
| capitalists to exploit workers. Lights took the night
| from rebels. Steam engines took farmers out of the
| daylight and put them in mechanised factories. Hell,
| agriculture enabled modern civilisation but also created
| such a wave of oppression and anxiety we're _still_
| worshiping the gods we invented to save us from it.
|
| None of those statements is wrong. But they're also
| incomplete.
| fidotron wrote:
| Clocks did not succeed because of their ability to
| exploit workers (they were way more useful on ships), nor
| lights because of rebels, but SV companies do succeed,
| spectacularly, once their utility for totalitarianism has
| been demonstrated. For example, the price of nVidia over
| time, the TikTok hysteria, Facebook, Twitter, Google,
| Palantir, Tesla, even Figma is like in a secondary market
| of helping to provide the veneer.
|
| Conversely, if you are of no use to such a regime you
| will not get very far. The only meaningful question here
| is how organic this phenomenon is.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| You're claiming nVidia, Facebook, Google and Tesla only
| started to become successful when they proved their value
| to totalitarians?
| fidotron wrote:
| They wouldn't be behemoths if they were not.
|
| nVidia - existed for years before most people noticed
| just what they were up to, and their change in valuation
| reflects that. For them AI was the point from the start,
| games was just the bootstrapping mechanism. Prior to the
| AI explosion they were a decent business but not a
| spectacular success.
|
| Facebook - succeeded where almost every other social
| media app failed before by enabling data gathering and
| narrative control for the most important demographics in
| society (MySpace, for example, did not)
|
| Google - a gov funded research project to organise and
| index information
|
| Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far
| easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| For anyone doubting this, recall that OpenAI is _already_
| loosening it 's "principles" with regard to the use of
| it's products for surveillance of innocent civilian
| populations that have not committed crimes, and yet who's
| behaviors are being monitored and recorded, and analyzed,
| not the least of which is Israel's current use which is
| open, naked oppression and targeting.
|
| And despite the fact that OpenAI has incredibly low
| adoption everywhere outside of that, it is still worth
| tens of billions of dollars. Do you really think that
| valuation comes from being able to remove people from
| fuckin cellphone pictures with a tap, or generating
| royalty free images?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| > Google - a gov funded research project to organise and
| index information
|
| > Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far
| easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.
|
| I'm sorry, your tinfoil hat is slipping.
| fidotron wrote:
| https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-
| in-ci...
|
| That's Google.
|
| I live in Quebec where the gov electricity monopoly
| (Hydro Quebec) now insist that new homes have smart
| meters in, where they can remotely control your
| thermostat, while simultaneously campaigning to make all
| alternatives illegal. Curiously we're also a big Tesla
| market because of the cheap electricity, which is also
| the reason for the thermostats: they want to turn the
| heating down in Quebec so they can sell the same
| electricity for more south of the border.
| kaibee wrote:
| > Tesla - people dependent on the electrical grid are far
| easier to control than those dependent on gasoline.
|
| Where do you think gasoline comes from exactly? I can
| rechange an electric car completely off grid with
| solar/wind. I'm still working on my off-grid oil drilling
| and refinery operation.
| fidotron wrote:
| Unless there is a revolution in batteries (which we all
| hope there is) you won't be able to store or transport
| electricity with anything like the ease you can gasoline.
|
| If you try charging a car from a solar panel you aren't
| going to be going very far in a hurry.
| itronitron wrote:
| >> Any specificity to this example that doesn't apply to
| any game-changing technology?
|
| To answer your question with the clarity in which it was
| posed... 'definitely'
| itronitron wrote:
| Yeah, we're long past "Technology is morally neutral"
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I remember running into a programmer at a MacHack conference
| (so you know it was a _long_ time ago).
|
| He was an Australian contractor, working for the UAE.
|
| He was working on a database system, for tracking citizens. He
| flat-out told me it was a tool for their monarchy, to wield
| power.
|
| In the US, people keep talking about the Second Amendment, as
| some kind of guarantor of liberty, but their eyes glaze over,
| when I tell them that the computer database is the biggest
| threat to human rights in history, and now, AI will make it
| _much_ worse.
| silverquiet wrote:
| What liberties are you worried about (in the context of the
| US)?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not the OP, but the US has a shitton of laws that make
| basically everyone a felon [0] and only the sheer
| impossibility of tracking everyone everywhere makes ad-hoc
| prosecution complicated/impractical.
|
| The advent of AI may bring down this last obstacle.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-
| Innocent/dp...
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Assuming I don't want to pay money for that book, can you
| give me a single example of a law that your average
| American is likely to feloniously violate by accident?
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I don't think it's the lack of tracking. It's that almost
| all of those "3 a day" violations are only technically
| violations. If you try to actually charge someone in
| front of a jury, they're going to return something along
| the lines of "not guilty because the prosecutor is an
| idiot".
|
| That's assuming that the judge doesn't find a way to
| throw it out long before it ever sees a jury. Courts
| don't like wasting their time on stupid stuff.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Most trials in the US never go to jury, right? The risk
| of receiving a crushing sentence is just too big, so
| almost everyone accepts a plea bargain.
|
| Notoriously, Hans Reiser (who is guilty, never doubted
| that) refused a rather low plea bargain of IDK six?
| years, tried his luck with a jury trial, and got life.
| piva00 wrote:
| Even before that the Nazis used IBM machines to create a
| pretty efficient analog database of the Jewish population to
| track and murder them.
|
| An evil regime didn't even need computers for a database to
| be dangerous, computers just made it much more efficient and
| scarier.
| lesuorac wrote:
| Well Nazis had like ~30% support in Germany so that's
| probably enough to monitor the remaining 70% (1 person to
| monitor ~2 others)
|
| However, if your regime is even smaller like 5% or 10% it's
| going to be extremely difficult to manage the remaining 95%
| without more advanced technology than pen and paper.
| fidotron wrote:
| There is more to it than that.
|
| The notorious example is the Dutch Jews who basically
| filled in a register of themselves and provided it to the
| Nazis.
| Muromec wrote:
| I tried to watch Joodse Raad and I just can't.
| Muromec wrote:
| Yet, they killed the Jews in occupied countries as well.
| Shockingly, the Nazis were the least efficient at doing
| their genocide at home where the support was highest.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I think it's inverted: their support was highest where
| they weren't doing the worst things.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Not that surprising. They needed slaves to build their
| war machine and you want these factories far from the
| front.
| dendrite9 wrote:
| This NYT article had an article with some interesting history
| of one of the character who saw that opportunity. I see
| almost all tech focused on advertising as an unfortunate
| continuation of this trend. And it feels like people are
| fooling themselves to say it will not be used for restrictive
| purposes. But maybe I'm wrong.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/magazine/hank-asher-
| data....
| yesco wrote:
| At the end of the day, someone has to do the actual
| enforcement though right? I'm not saying a government super
| database that knows everything about you isn't a threat to
| human rights as you say, but the biggest threat? I would have
| to disagree.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They don't threaten you per say but really they absolutely
| hamstring the one ability that matters if your incentive is
| to hold the seat of power: the ability to organize the
| population and form a new government or at the very least
| claw back some power that has been granted to certain
| individuals and groups. 1776 would be impossible today.
| jajko wrote:
| People getting back to 2nd amendment are a funky bunch, they
| talk about need for automatic weapons to defend against
| government, when in reality they would be bringing say ar-15
| to a drone fight.
|
| If war in Ukraine showed anything its that armed single guy,
| or bunch of them, are meaningless against any modern threat.
| Other, say SHTF scenarios, are just wet fantasies of big kids
| doing some obscure form of LARP.
| drawkward wrote:
| Money and power consolidate like a fundamental force of
| economics. Unsurprising that the 0.1% finds more in common with
| itself than hoi polloi.
|
| What changed is that SV used to have neither power nor money.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > What changed is that SV used to have neither power nor money.
|
| Surely SV had to have power (including knowledgeable people)
| and money to develop semiconductor manufacturing facilities
| (famously expensive). Not to mention the support of US federal
| government spending.
| jpalawaga wrote:
| The thinkers and tinkerers were joined by business men.
| fallingknife wrote:
| You say that like it's a bad thing, but it isn't. There are
| pretty much three options for a thinker / tinkerer:
|
| 1. work for a business man
|
| 2. become a business man yourself
|
| 3. do some other job to support yourself and think / tinker
| only as a hobby
| rachofsunshine wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with doing business. But current
| business culture is not in a (morally) good state, and your
| average businessperson is not very interested in making the
| world better if it plays against their personal ambitions.
| And being answerable to investors (who almost by nature are
| focused on shortish term returns to the near-exclusion of all
| else) only exacerbates that.
|
| The distinction between _business_ and _capital_ is pretty
| blurred right now, and it shouldn 't be. Operating a charity
| that delivers donated food to orphaned victims of war is a
| business in the broad sense of the word, and there are many
| things that go into operating it well, including things like
| management and finance. Those things do not, inherently, have
| to be in the pursuit of capital growth; there are many
| humanistic ends they can be directed to. But in our world as
| it stands they usually _aren 't_ - they're directed towards
| capital growth and that fact corrupts them like it corrupts
| everything else.
|
| Or, put another way, there is a difference between "making
| enough money to run a sustainable business" and "making all
| the money it is possible to make". Many large businesses run
| reasonably substantial profit margins, and every dollar of
| profit a business makes is a dollar it could afford _not_ to
| make in the pursuit of more humanistic ends if it so chose.
| fallingknife wrote:
| How can you separate capital from human interest when the
| majority of people on earth spend the majority of their
| time in pursuit of it? Less people starve today than ever
| in the past, and that is because we have more capital, not
| because we are more charitable than back then. Charity is
| not any less corrupt, it is just more emotionally appealing
| because of the illusion of selflessness and a whole lot
| less effective.
|
| You say "your average businessperson is not very interested
| in making the world better if it plays against their
| personal ambitions." But I claim that it's not your average
| businessperson it's your average _person_ with business
| people just being a subset of that.
|
| And that's not even getting into the problem of how does
| anybody really know how to make the world a better place.
| In my experience people with a "just doing my job" attitude
| make much better bosses than those who act like they have a
| higher purpose.
| rachofsunshine wrote:
| I agree with you that this is not unique to
| businesspeople, although I suspect it's probably
| disproportionately represented there - both because
| business is attracted to people pursuing self-interest
| ruthlessly and because it often presents excellent
| conditions for tilting people towards self-interest even
| if not naturally inclined to it. But I would also make a
| distinction between what a _business_ does and what
| _businesspeople_ are. It 's not hard to build incentive
| structures that turn good people towards bad ends.
|
| I tend to think, for example, that your average Boeing
| engineer probably wanted to do a good job and not have
| doors fall off their planes. But when you put multiple
| layers of abstraction in the way and have leaders looking
| through business metrics, it isn't hard for everyday
| crappiness to maneuver its way to the point where that
| isn't prioritized. Almost no one in the chain really
| thinks they're sacrificing safety, they think they're
| doing their job and improving efficiency by cutting
| redundant steps.
|
| > In my experience people with a "just doing my job"
| attitude make much better bosses than those who act like
| they have a higher purpose.
|
| Sure, because there's a difference between a performative
| "mission", a self-obsessed founder who makes their own
| success a story about the future of Earth, and someone
| who makes concretely difficult decisions when the chips
| are down.
|
| This is kind of what I mean by the corruptive effects of
| growth. Having a mission _is_ a good thing, but most
| companies ' "missions" are implicitly always secondary to
| their financial growth, or worse, a cynical ploy for
| employee engagement. When people write crappy press
| releases about how "this will enable us to serve more of
| our users" (read: expand our market), that's not a
| statement about how serving users is bad, it's just that
| for most businesses it's necessarily with an asterisk of
| "we want to serve our users* *as long as it pleases our
| investors".
| nordstreem wrote:
| Do the majority spend their time in pursuit of money
| because they want to or because the rent is so damn high?
| Because it's what we're educated to do? I don't mean
| academic education either. I mean Main Street social
| norms where there's no longer being friends with
| neighbors. But they'll mow your lawn for money if you're
| ever too busy (had that exact conversation with a
| neighbor recently; we aren't going to be friends/friendly
| but will serve you for $).
| bradleyjg wrote:
| _There 's nothing wrong with doing business. But current
| business culture is not in a (morally) good state, and your
| average businessperson is not very interested in making the
| world better if it plays against their personal ambitions.
| And being answerable to investors (who almost by nature are
| focused on shortish term returns to the near-exclusion of
| all else) only exacerbates that._
|
| Just as people should specialize, institutions should too.
|
| We should not have this whole movement to jawbone companies
| into being "nice." All we are going to get is a creepy
| facsimile. See, e.g. greenwashing.
|
| Instead we should understand that profit maximizing firms
| operating in competition with each other is an incredibly
| powerful but one dimensional tool. We in our sovereign
| capacity should set the incentives and rules such that
| those tools are used to accomplish the things we
| collectively desire to see in the world.
|
| Incentives and rules (with enforcement) are reliable and
| durable. A "better businessperson" is just transient luck.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| the issue is as soon as you enable the power for some to
| set incentives and rules to see certain outcomes, it gets
| taken over by the rich entrenched status quo that is
| easily able to use the tools of modern propaganda to
| drown out any true grassroots opinion, and see to it that
| their horse is the one to win the race. It almost takes a
| total reset event like a gigantic war to shake up the
| economic status quo but even then, what forms in the dust
| is almost naturally these oligarchs like stardust
| accumulating into black holes after the big bang.
| rachofsunshine wrote:
| I agree with that, but I don't think it's too
| controversial to say that those checks are not working
| very well right now. Changing the nature of regulatory
| capture isn't in my power. Starting a company and trying
| not to be crappy is.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Hard to argue with that!
| maxglute wrote:
| What's left after cheap money is gone? Defense money. Oil money.
| Money is money.
| karaterobot wrote:
| In case you're not a WaPo subscriber, like all the people who've
| already commented on the article, here's a link so you can read
| it:
|
| https://archive.is/fF4NG
| treflop wrote:
| I've been to the UAE and they've been in a super fast track to
| modernization. In the 60s, the whole country had less than 90,000
| people and now they are over 8 million. As a foreigner I could
| buy alcohol and this wasn't even possible until more recently.
|
| I expect in time the UAE might soften up even further. Many of
| their orthodox/conservative values have been eroding away for
| decades now. Their native Emirati population is an absolute
| minority now and there is no way they're not going to be forced
| to continue liberalization.
| deepsun wrote:
| Be careful now. I'm old enough to have seen how quickly it can
| be reversed back into dark ages. Big money can silence and
| oppress even 8 millions, no problem.
| treflop wrote:
| In the case of the UAE, it wouldn't be the money. It would be
| a change in leader.
|
| The current president (one of only 2) is the son of the first
| and he isn't as liberal or as charitable, although his dad
| did create the country by unifying the region after Great
| Britain pulled out.
|
| But he isn't too bad, but if he goes away, UAE being an
| authoritarian dictatorship, it could go both ways.
|
| Inconsistent and unpredictable governance is the death knell
| of many countries and any organization. That's why
| authoritarian governments are never stable long term.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| They seem to often be stable for decades which is dangerous
| enough for them
| gwbas1c wrote:
| Hopefully they go the way of the UK: The Sovereign (King or
| Queen) gradually evolved to have limited power.
| nine_k wrote:
| They would first need an angry mob of barons (sheikhs?)
| to force the king to sign a Magna Carta.
| logicchains wrote:
| That's already the case; the king doesn't have absolute
| power, the sheikhs of each of the Emirates share power
| (proportional to how rich/powerful their emirate is).
| That's why Dubai's policies on so many things differ
| vastly from Abu Dhabi's; it's a bit like the US's
| federalism.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Given that the UK's gradual evolution involved lopping
| off one king's head and another king getting disposed
| when his military essentially refuses to resist an
| invasion, and that both of these were caused in no small
| part by the respective kings holding the wrong religion
| (and attempting to impose it!) according to their
| subjects, I don't think the UK is the model you'd want to
| see followed.
| wongarsu wrote:
| > That's why authoritarian governments are never stable
| long term.
|
| Authoritarian governments counter this issue with
| hereditary monarchy. The current leader can impart their
| knowledge and mindset on their next of kin, and having a
| clear successor removes power struggles and provides
| predictability. Even if the successor has different views
| this is often known far in advance, which allows people to
| take this into consideration.
|
| It's by no means perfect and has lots of opportunities to
| go wrong, but over the last 1000 years or so hereditary
| monarchies have a much better track record of stability
| than democracies.
| dragontamer wrote:
| There's this little war called "World War 1" which
| resulted in the absolute collapse of the final world-
| power level monarchies.
|
| As it turns out: the problems of monarchies is innate.
| Hereditary Monarchies lead to a separation into "Noble"
| vs "Peasant" classes, where Nobles have a genetic line to
| the throne. The Nobles believe themselves to be superior
| and start putting themselves into various sections of
| government, when in actuality many Peasants are actually
| better than the Nobles.
|
| So when it comes to War (the only time societies can
| directly compare against each other), the side that has a
| bigger recruitment pool (ie: Peasant commanders, aka
| Napoleon's secret sauce), tends to win. This is also true
| of sciences, research, production, etc. etc. Every part
| of society, there are likely peasant leaders who are best
| at the job.
|
| Peasants win not necessarily because Peasants are
| smarter, but because peasants are at "sometimes" smarter,
| and this "sometimes" happens in a large enough degree
| that anyone who cuts off their leadership pool into
| "Family members of the Monarch only" innately hampers
| their abilities to lead over time.
|
| -----------
|
| Now colonial rule by far-away foreign powers is clearly a
| bad situation as well (as Britain's control over its
| former colonies can likely attest). But that's not
| "Democracy" either.
|
| Hereditary monarchy may be an improvement over UAE's
| position (ie: better than foreign colonialism), but lets
| not get ahead of ourselves. The world gave up on
| monarchies over a century ago for a good damn reason.
| wongarsu wrote:
| I absolutely agree that monarchies have a lot of
| downsides. Democracies not only provide a bigger pool of
| potential talent but also align incentives between
| population and government much better. This seems to also
| be reflected in economic growth, where democracies
| typically perform much better.
|
| Still, I think it's important to acknowledge that
| authoritarian governments have seen a lot of refinement
| over thousands of years, while democracies are
| historically the exception and only became popular 300
| years ago. Expecting authoritarian governments to just
| implode without external influence seems unfounded.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| accelerated world change has made examples from 1000
| years ago, less relevant
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| The native population is roughly 1M. All other 7M are
| immigrants. So they don't have to turn against no-one.
| Locals tend to get pretty good jobs and are actually
| expected to perform.
|
| The UAE is actually pretty predictable.
|
| All in all, I wouldn't call UAE a dictatorship.
| toss1 wrote:
| Yes. The best, most effective form of government is a
| benevolent dictatorship.
|
| However, the mega-fatal flaw is that it is not reliably
| sustainable.
|
| Ultimately, every dictatorship becomes malevolent.
|
| Then, the need to protect the malevolent leadership from
| the subjects forces closed, loyalty-based structures, and
| plants the seeds of the dictatorship's demise as mistrust
| and inefficiency rot the structure and the society.
| Meanwhile, millions rot and die.
| sniggers wrote:
| Authoritarian governments can actually get things done.
| China built a high-speed rail system connecting every large
| and medium-sized city in their country in 10 years. We
| can't manage to build a high speed rail system in one state
| in the US. (California.)
|
| On a federal level, every President that represents a
| different party than the last immediately undoes the
| changes made by the last. The only lasting changes from a
| Presidential term are Supreme Court justices because
| they're for life.
|
| Democracy < dictatorship if you value technological and
| infrastructural progress over diversity, equity and
| inclusion.
| gmac wrote:
| > Democracy < dictatorship if you value technological and
| infrastructural progress over diversity, equity and
| inclusion.
|
| Or not, depending on what examples you pick.
|
| You might also want to include freedom and human rights
| in this picture somewhere.
| sniggers wrote:
| The only democracies that have ever managed to succeed
| were able to overcome the inherent flaws in democracy due
| to being racially/culturally homogeneous. The US and
| Europe will not be so in the near future, thus they will
| not succeed.
|
| Freedom is great, but when it results in the place I live
| gradually turning into a shithole due to political
| paralysis I grow more inclined to value national
| competency over freedom.
|
| Would you rather live in the Congo and have the right to
| strongly criticize the government or live in China and
| not have that right?
| mgbmtl wrote:
| That's an odd reference to DEI. I'd say the negative
| consequences of authoritarian regimes is that they
| suppress freedom, and therefore art and technological
| innovation.
|
| China is authoritarian, but also has a huge political
| system, somewhat strong institutions. That can't be said
| of many authoritarian regimes, which tend to be more
| fragile. It takes a really long time to build civil
| institutions. For example, Russia has the money and an
| authoritarian regime, but repeatedly fails to innovate,
| and we can't predict what will happen when Putin leaves.
| boringg wrote:
| Its like you are referencing Iran before the revolution.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah I was going to say another factor is a large
| population of poor, unemployed/underemployed young people.
| That is fertile ground for the rise of an authoritarian
| populist or religious zealot.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| The thing is SA is already an authoritarian country. They
| have an absolute ruler who does whatever he wants. No
| "magna carta" event has happened yet for KSA. Its still
| very old school and old world in the way that power is
| structured. All you need is the next heir to be a bit
| more sociopathic than even this current ruler is and life
| changes overnight.
| autoexec wrote:
| It'll be so much easier to oppress those millions of people
| after all the new tech they're getting to
| control/track/monitor the population too.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| State of the art western funded military as well.
| nine_k wrote:
| Search online and look what Iran looked like in, say, 1975.
| Equally, what Afghanistan looked like in 1970. Or, maybe more
| relevant, what Russia looked like in, say, 2005.
|
| Sadly, the words about eternal vigilance as _the_ price of
| liberty are as true today as 250 years ago, and even that is
| not a guarantee :(
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Iran looked like in, say, 1975. Equally, what Afghanistan
| looked like in 1970
|
| That's really a VERY narrow slice of those societies in
| Tehran/Mashhad/Isfahan and Kabul.
| jajko wrote:
| True and cca 8 years ago it was not all doom and gloom
| either in Iran, I had quite a few anti-regime talks with
| random folks who just came to me as visible outsider, not
| sure about now.
|
| But his point still stands, things can and do go to shit,
| anywhere. 90s were a magical period when world consistently
| fell even from major news like moving towards bright
| future. 9/11 changed that for good and common americans let
| that fear-based manipulation (and 2 absolutely meaningless
| wars as we see now) happen and gradually roll over entire
| world, that's also one of 'super powers' of being a
| superpower.
| nine_k wrote:
| Exactly. This is what they looked like for a casual
| observer in the West, who reads magazines and watches TV,
| but does not study such things in depth. Things looked
| liberal and Westernized, a few more steps, and these
| countries join the club of relaxed liberal democracies.
|
| Not that these liberal vistas were not true, but they did
| not represent the whole truth.
|
| The same applies to UAE, to the modern Saudi Arabia, etc,
| but also, say to European countries themselves (hi,
| Hungary, are you blazing the trail for Poland?) and the US
| (where _suddenly_ half the population supports Trump).
| itronitron wrote:
| So do women have equal rights in the UAE or SA? Can they vote
| or drive cars?
| logicchains wrote:
| They can drive cars, and they have the same right not to vote
| as men in those countries (which aren't democracies so
| there's no voting).
| jajko wrote:
| That's really the least problematic aspect of those societies
| from any rational point of view (and sort of obsolete now as
| other comment mentions)
| itronitron wrote:
| 'obsolete' is not the word I would use to describe someone
| not having a right to vote
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > So do women have equal rights in the UAE or SA? Can they
| vote or drive cars?
|
| The UAE and SA are _very_ different.
|
| Non-emiratis women are wearing bikinis everywhere on the
| Dubai beaches. You can buy alcohol there are the supermarket
| (you need a license for that but it's easy to get).
|
| And, yup, women can drive there.
| adolph wrote:
| Not especially a SV thing. See also:
|
| _The Middle East's play to rule global sports - Washington Post
| November 7, 2023 - How Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and
| Qatar are upending the sports world -- and what they want from
| their newfound power._
|
| _Texas A &M pulls branch out of Qatar, citing regional
| instability - The Washington Post February 11, 2024 - The Qatari
| government pays hundreds ... to the universities each year and in
| return the branches provide elite higher education for hundreds
| of Qatari students as well as others from around the region._
|
| Related: _The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small
| Minority_
|
| _It suffices for an intransigent minority -a certain type of
| intransigent minorities -to reach a minutely small level, say
| three or four percent of the total population, for the entire
| population to have to submit to their preferences._
|
| https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I don't know what the past was like, but the tech industry seems
| happy to take anyone's money. I'm not sure I can blame
| individuals - if you're desperate to survive and are working
| hard, it's difficult to throw it all away and say no. It's not
| surprising to see a Middle East gold rush when you have companies
| saying yes to China, to private equity, etc. If we want any of
| this to change, it'll take regulation.
|
| Singling out Silicon Valley or the Middle East also doesn't make
| sense when most of the economy has been outsourcing manufacturing
| to China, which annexed Tibet illegally and subjected them to re
| education, committed genocide in Xinjiang against Uyghurs,
| suppressed its citizens with the great firewall and social credit
| scores, violated agreements around Hong Kong's governance,
| illegally attacked other countries ships in the South China Sea,
| etc. Comparatively, the UAE and Saudi Arabia feel friendly.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| When I see the eye-watering amounts of money that sovereign
| wealth funds are willing to pay for talent, I get very concerned
| for our countries national security. They regularly throw out 7
| figures for the right folks.
|
| All you have to do is starting reading about DarkMatter or G42
| group. Somehow, working in AI on training new LLMs can put you
| into a direct line to the guys who murdered Khashoggi
|
| I think back to that movie "Cube" and the philosophical
| discussion they have about the creators of the system that
| they're in. They end up agreeing that the individual cubes were
| built for possible benign or even good reasons, but in their
| combining together does it turn into a "torture" chamber. That
| individual good intentions can be subverted at scale to have
| "tyranny" without the mitigating factor of the tramua that it
| normally induces is scary indeed.
| programjames wrote:
| I thought you were talking about DarkMatter2525, and wondering
| why they would be working in the Middle East.
| dumbobaggins999 wrote:
| The "Twitter Revolution" and the promise of changing the world to
| spread democracy seem so quaint now. These are tools for
| surveillance and crushing dissent.
| ang_cire wrote:
| Silicon Valley was once the domain of nerds and introverts trying
| to build a better future.
|
| Now it's the domain of MBA-bros and idea guys- sorry, Thought
| Leaders- trying to measure themselves with their bank accounts.
|
| They ditched even the most basic principles (like, "Don't be
| evil") in pursuit of obscene wealth and unsustainable growth, so
| why is anyone shocked they sold away their political principles
| as well?
| jf22 wrote:
| It was always about money, and it always will be about money.
|
| "Don't be evil" was a silly cultural builder mantra and
| marketing tool.
| gumby wrote:
| > It was always about money, and it always will be about
| money.
|
| There were people like that in the old days (TJ Rogers, Larry
| Ellison) but also a lot of hippie-influenced folks with an
| idealistic world view. People literally talked about making
| the world a better place without irony.
|
| But when the .com boom appeared people flooded here for the
| money and, since it appeared "make the world better" was one
| of the things people said, it was cargo-culted widely ("we're
| making the world a better place by allowing advertisers to
| reach audiences they were previously excluded from").
|
| Fortunately the density of idealists is higher in SV and
| density of narcissists higher in SF. But yes, the quality has
| gone down.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| It was always like that; just plenty of people naive enough not
| to realize that.
| silverquiet wrote:
| "Office Space" was a 1999 movie based on Mike Judge's Silicon
| Valley experience from the 80's. "Silicon Valley" was his
| updated take on it I suppose.
| krapp wrote:
| > Silicon Valley was once the domain of nerds and introverts
| trying to build a better future.
|
| Silicon Valley used to be "Defense Valley" because it built
| weapons systems for the DOD long before the web came around. It
| was never the domain of nerds and introverts trying to build a
| better future, it has always been evil and done evil for the
| sake of capitalism.
| moi2388 wrote:
| Seriously stop posting f-ing paywalls. At least post an archived
| version with it.
|
| Such bad form
| dang wrote:
| This was settled many years ago
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989): if there's a
| workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the
| thread.
|
| This is in the FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I concur, screw the policy that was decided unilaterally
| anyhow. I never got the point of posting an article to a
| discussion board knowing it has a paywall that prevents a lot
| of people from engaging with it, unless you are some sort of a
| shill account looking to pad subscriptions. If archive posts
| are tolerated, probably in violation of publishers wishes
| anyhow, might as well pin these comments or even replace the
| link.
| msarrel wrote:
| I thought it was ethically questionable when the startup I worked
| for sold to the Saudi DOD. I'm glad the concept of ethics isn't
| getting in anyone else's way either.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/F8G2j
| 23B1 wrote:
| Authoritarian regimes have learned from China how to puppeteer
| with both hands.
| _xander wrote:
| The big tech co I work at has filled thousands of back office
| roles in UAE this year. Political neutrality + fundraising + tax
| advantages have pulled them away from US/Europe/Asia
| rchaud wrote:
| Political neutrality? The UAE owns the biggest soccer club in
| England, and UK MPs do not dare criticize the country's
| policies anymore.
|
| Perhaps you mean that companies are insulated from politics
| because they operate in a business-friendly dictatorship where
| the majority of residents are migrant workers with no rights.
| No unionization worries when you can just confiscate passports
| and delay payment of wages as needed.
| opyate wrote:
| > UK MPs do not dare criticize the country's policies anymore
|
| We have to remember that the UK is not a real country. It
| does not have a real government. It's all Potemkinised. It's
| all for show. It's not real. It's not run by serious people.
| It's run for oligarchs and money launderers.
|
| Besides, the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi
| is now a massive 6 years in the past, so no-one is tweeting
| about it or shaming any Saudi-friendly folks publicly about
| it any more, so the startup CEOs can come and busk on the
| Riyadh street corners without fear of retribution.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Don't forget a favorable immigration environment for the many
| many smart people in India who don't win visa lotteries to
| western countries
| LightBug1 wrote:
| My boss is currently on a visit to Saudi to drum up business ...
| the last 12 months has been nothing short of the full on
| capitulation of western businesses to Saudi money ... all concept
| of ethics has been completely dropped or 'explained away'.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| or because whataboutisms are extremely accurate criticisms of
| trying to blacklist a whole country over a matter unrelated to
| investment and revenues when your country or "the West" has
| objectionable things too, often the same things
| LightBug1 wrote:
| You're pretty heavily downvoted, but I agree to some extent.
| Really, I'm just pointing out how marked the trend has been.
| The line in the sand with Saudi has just blown away in the
| wind ... of perceived easy money.
|
| I don't agree with the point on blacklisting countries. We
| boycotted South African goods back in the day when were were
| pushing for the fall of Apartheid. And I'll be boycotting
| Israeli goods right now. And I'd stop my boss working with
| Saudi if I could.
|
| Bring the grey'ness ...
| rayiner wrote:
| Why are "investment and revenues" so important that we must
| ignore other considerations?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| they're not so important to ignore other considerations,
| just when you apply that standard to countries and
| individuals within country you happen to respect, you'll
| find the same reasons to boycott
|
| the unwillingness of boycotters to see that makes me more
| willing to ignore them
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I humbly suggest that ethics are not universal but heavily
| culturally dependent.
| tomcar288 wrote:
| absolutely. it's a matter of perspective. thinking that you
| and only you have the "moral" high road, just leads to
| oppression. good and bad are relative to who's making the
| judgement
| rayiner wrote:
| That's true. And how the Saudis choose to run their society
| is none of America's business. The feeling that America is
| intruding into their societies is in fact a huge source of
| anger in the Muslim world.
|
| But nothing about the principle that societies are entitled
| to decide for themselves how to govern themselves requires
| people in America to accept Americans doing business with
| other people who have very different values. That's a
| completely different matter.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| That would be fine if we didn't selectively pick which
| countries we apply those rules to. China is an ethical
| nightmare but we have and continue to do business with
| them, why change that when it comes to the Middle East.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| What makes you think people who disapprove of getting in
| bed with the Middle East approve of getting in bed with
| China? Did you ask them? Or did you want so badly to
| accuse them of hypocrisy that you simply assumed it to be
| the case?
| dangus wrote:
| I feel like there's some point where Western culture
| doesn't have an obligation to be tolerant of cultures that
| quite literally enslave half of their population into
| second class citizen status (women). I kind of doubt you'd
| have the same sympathy for their culture if you were a
| woman. You wouldn't be allowed to drive there 10 years ago.
|
| In my friend group every woman friend I have refuses to go
| to Dubai or Oman or Saudi Arabia anywhere like that.
| They'll go to just about anywhere else including places
| with travel advisories like China. Even if those locations
| are "safe" the reputation isn't there.
|
| Saudi Arabia is getting better on women's rights but they
| have a long way to go and it's not somewhere where you want
| to relocate to work for a global corporation if you're a
| woman, if you're gay, if you're atheist, if you're trans,
| etc.
|
| This isn't really about intrusion. This is about Saudi
| Arabia's need to diversify their economy and attract
| foreign investment and a foreign professional workforce.
| It's not really the West's problem if they stay existing as
| a regressive patriarchy forever, the West will happily keep
| buying oil until it runs out.
|
| But if Saudi Arabia wants to diversify its economy, it
| needs to be a safe and accepting place for women, LGBTQ,
| atheists, etc. If you want me to come work for a
| multinational corporation you need to assure me that I
| won't be arrested for having a beer or smoking a joint,
| because that's what they're competing with with countries
| sackfield wrote:
| In Dubai right now, one of the things I really like about this
| place is the optimism they have for the future. It's exhausting
| working in tech and being in places that don't believe
| engineering will usher in a better future (but somehow think
| legal policy will). I'm visiting the museum of the future
| tomorrow, can't wait.
| croes wrote:
| Sounds really like the future
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Dubai
| sackfield wrote:
| Having optimism about the future means it will change for the
| better. You are referring to the present. Weird how many
| people find this concept uncomfortable, and perhaps is a good
| example of my original argument.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There's foolish optimism too. E.g. what is stopping the
| dubai government from ending laws like death penalty for
| homosexuals and atheists, or being put on trial for
| violating ramedan as a nonmuslim? Nothing, except for their
| cruel leadership who is interested in harming groups they
| don't agree with in this manner. Why would you expect to
| change if it hasn't already? What evidence does the
| leadership need to wake up from their bigotry and hatred?
| Has logic and empathy ever shifted a bigots opinions
| before? I think not. You can argue well "the next
| generation will be better" but at the same time this
| current generation of leadership is the generation that
| should have known better, yet here we are.
| mdbmdb wrote:
| Nothing stops them but it doesn't happen overnight. These
| laws have been in place for a long long time. Women
| weren't allowed to drive in Dubai until 2018 but it
| changed. Changes will come but not in a blink of an eye
| croes wrote:
| Change for whom?
|
| Is that optimism shared by the foreign workers?
| nojvek wrote:
| Not sure why you're downvoted. Been to Dubai multiple times.
| They're investing heavy in tech and infrastructure.
|
| Americans have their own version of what is right but that
| doesn't mean it's right for everyone.
|
| Competition is a wonderful thing.
|
| Same as China, the first tier cities actually feel like the
| future.
|
| It's not perfect, but different in it's own way.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Saudi Arabia is trying to entrench itself in the American
| culture, not just in tech companies either. The PGA tour-LIV
| drama is a bit of a fun read if you can find a decent summary
| article. So much mental gymnastics going on with how that shook
| out for all parties.
|
| Basically SA started a golf league (LIV) buy paying hundreds of
| millions of dollars a piece to established pro golfers who are
| probably on their way out of pro sports in terms of their career
| anyhow. Great deal for an aging player unlikely to win many times
| again, so many took the money. PGA tour responded by banning
| these players from competing in their tournaments. Fast forward a
| year, the PGA tour commissioner sets up a secret deal to
| integrate SA funding into the PGA tour and blindsides the people
| resenting the players as well as most anyone else. Doesn't
| respond to comments when it breaks of course. Mind you this is
| after that same commissioner was grandstanding for a year against
| the LIV league about Saudi ethics and bloodmoney. Turns out he
| was just negotiating a price.
| gumby wrote:
| They'll be in good company: Arms Dealers and Drug Lords Are
| Scooping Up Property in Dubai -- New leaks of property records
| reveal shady characters hiding out in Dubai, a haven for
| fugitives
|
| (Dubai is part of the UAE)
|
| https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/duba...
| the_panopticon wrote:
| An interesting example of that flocking from some tech talent in
| the Pacific Northwest
| https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/omniva-stealth-st...
| tomcar288 wrote:
| look, you can't just pretend that if the US weren't there they
| won't get their hands on AI software to do what they need done.
| if the US doesn't partner with them then China will or russia
| will or any number of other countries.
|
| with the massive excess of software talent that's flooding the
| market, they're going to get what they're after one way or
| another.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| The UAE decided to welcome businesses and now has the biggest
| airport in the world by several metrics. They "stole" a great
| many businesses with attractive taxes (0% is attractive) and
| _ease_ of company setups: e.g. my native Belgium used to be the
| place in the world where the most diamonds were traded (often by
| jewish families and the city of Antwerp in Belgium was the
| biggest diamond hub on the planet: I have friends from such
| families)... But now it 's Dubai.
|
| When countries tax companies at 30%+ then tax people at up to 69%
| on income (50% income tax + 19% social welfare tax in Begium if
| you're self employed and making "good" money: good money which is
| not so good anymore after 69% taxes) on one hand and, on the
| other hand, you can establish a company in a free-zone in Dubai
| that taxes at 0%, it's going to cost you business.
|
| Now, I know, I know: "But ethics?". Well... Guess what: if
| countries in, say, the EU had reasonable taxation, maybe 10% to
| 15%, many who prefer to pack and leave for Dubai would likely
| stay in the EU (weather is _really_ warm in Dubai: you basically
| live with AC and Dubai is polluted). But 30% tax on my company,
| then another 30% on my dividends? Or up to 69% if I 'm self-
| employed?
|
| You know what: at these levels just screw my native country.
|
| I voted with my feet and my wallet and left (not for the UAE
| though).
|
| As a friend of mine puts it: _" I buy (physical) commodities in
| Africa, I ship them from Africa to China and sell them to
| China... Why would I pay any tax to the EU?"_. And, guess what:
| he's got companies (with a 's') in freezones in Dubai to do his
| trade. He also pays 0% on dividends but that's another topic.
|
| Commodities, diamonds (you can criticize humans wearing diamonds:
| that's not the point), international aviation (Dubai is a
| gigantic hub and this brings in lots of money/tourism), now even
| cryptocurrencies (instead of having an ultra-regulatory approach
| they prefer to be open), etc.
|
| Who's really the bad guys here? What are "our" states doing: say
| the EU and the US? Besides coming with ever more taxes, ever more
| laws, ever more rules, ever less liberties?
|
| Meanwhile the novelty coming to the EU is this: the EU, who's
| supposed to have no fiscal competence, wants to impose, on top of
| all the national taxes, a new mandatory EU tax, that'd apply to
| every EU citizen.
|
| I am fed up with these taxes.
|
| Offer me, say, a music streaming service that'd be located in
| Dubai vs one located in France (like Qobuz), and I'll subscribe
| to the one in Dubai (even if it's a bit pricier): I know for I'm
| currently hesitating subscribing to Qobuz because I disagree with
| the french state and don't want to encourage business there and
| don't want that country to get any more of my money.
|
| Wanna compete and attract businesses? Lower your fucking KYC/AML
| and lower your fucking taxes.
|
| I do understand there's an ongoing attack on Dubai at this very
| moment : it's not because the EU and the US suddenly want to put
| criminals out of business though... It's because the EU and the
| US are pissed that money that used to be laundered home is now
| laundered in the UAE instead.
|
| Piss people enough, and they won't try to optimize to pay less
| taxes to their home country: piss them enough and they'll leave
| forever and make sure to never pay a cent anymore to their native
| country.
|
| Lower taxes, remove KYC/AML. And arrest criminals for the crimes
| they commit, not for the taxes they don't pay.
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