Disney is well known for going the extra mile with their attention to detail at their resorts. For instance, at the Epcot World Showcase, for each country highlighted they import foodstuff and merchandise and even people from the native countries. However, no matter how far they go with detail, going to Epcot in the dead of Summer will lend the same hot and sticky central Florida weather experience to each country one visits. Along those lines, over in Dubai they are working on the same Epcot-like experience called The Heart of Europe, but like most things in Dubai these days, they are working towards a very grandiose vision.
With the Heart of Europe, whole islands are dedicated to showcasing a European city. Not only will a visitor be immersed within a city that looks to be pulled right out of a European country, they plan on immersing you in European weather as well. You can already go and enjoy indoor black diamond slope skiing in Dubai, and now they want you to be able to enjoy an outdoor winter wonderland as well. Just providing rain would be tough enough, but given the climate of Dubai, meeting their vision will be quite a technological challenge.
(Score: 3, Informative) by CRCulver on Friday January 02 2015, @03:37PM
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 02 2015, @04:57PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by CRCulver on Friday January 02 2015, @05:16PM
All of that development is driven by a vision of a future after oil. Unlike some neighbouring Gulf States and parts of the UAE, Dubai does not have a significant amount of oil, so it has to attract investment by other means. Historically it has been a centre for trade, a role it ramped up in the 1990s, and it has succeeded in drawing many banks and other companies. This is Dubaiology 101, and I can't believe how many people still think that Dubai is an oil power well over a decade after it rose to global prominence.
Some of Dubai's projects have been unsuccessful. However, it remains an interesting scene. Even after the 2008 crash, when slashbots liked to claim that "Dubai is over", a lot of development has continued, it remains an attractive shopping destination for wealthy Russians and Chinese (or even for any budget traveler who wants a fun and surprisingly cheap 2-day layover when flying between between Europe and Asia/Australia), and its role as an East-Meets-West trade zone is unshaken.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 02 2015, @05:55PM
All of that development is driven by a vision of a future after oil. Unlike some neighbouring Gulf States and parts of the UAE, Dubai does not have a significant amount of oil, so it has to attract investment by other means. Historically it has been a centre for trade, a role it ramped up in the 1990s, and it has succeeded in drawing many banks and other companies. This is Dubaiology 101, and I can't believe how many people still think that Dubai is an oil power well over a decade after it rose to global prominence.
They aren't making their globally prominent profits by trading sand and salt water.
When the Middle East oil industry declines then so goes most of Dubai's trade and tourism. Then they're the Detroit of the Persian Gulf. Maybe they can cut up those buildings and sell them to the Chinese.
Some of Dubai's projects have been unsuccessful. However, it remains an interesting scene. Even after the 2008 crash, when slashbots liked to claim that "Dubai is over", a lot of development has continued, it remains an attractive shopping destination for wealthy Russians and Chinese (or even for any budget traveler who wants a fun and surprisingly cheap 2-day layover when flying between between Europe and Asia/Australia), and its role as an East-Meets-West trade zone is unshaken.
So the bubble didn't burst at that moment? That doesn't mean it will never burst.
Here's the thing. In a post-oil world, where's the money that Dubai will need to maintain all this real estate? Being a nice two day stop or an "East-meets-West" trade thing doesn't strike me as providing the sort of cash flow needed to keep the most extravagant skyline in the world from tumbling down.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CRCulver on Friday January 02 2015, @06:02PM
As a conveniently located port city, Dubai acts as a major transit point between Asia, Europe and Africa. Lots of raw materials and manufactured goods pass through there as they go from the manufacturer to the market.
A few grandiose projects aside, Dubai's development is not much different from, say, Hong Kong's in the 1980s. The financial sector alone (nothing to do with oil; companies from elsewhere want an advantageous place to register) can drive a hell of a lot of skyscraper building. Again, I don't see what oil has to do with it, unless you think that the end of oil will also spell the end of a lot of other major cities that don't have oil themselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @07:26PM
No, no, no. You don't get it. Khallow knows nothing about about Dubai, he couldn't even point it out on a map, but he does know that they can't seriously be trying to establish a post-oil economy. He knows they are just too stupid to think that through. Teenagers, they are so brilliant.
if he did actually know anything about Dubai he'd be on their case for using slave labor [vice.com] because even a teenager can get that one right.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 03 2015, @07:19AM
No, no, no. You don't get it. Khallow knows nothing about about Dubai, he couldn't even point it out on a map, but he does know that they can't seriously be trying to establish a post-oil economy. He knows they are just too stupid to think that through. Teenagers, they are so brilliant.
Another AC so stupid it hurts. I chalk this one up to profound ignorance of history. After you've been through a few economic bubbles, you start noticing common warning signs, like completely ignoring risk, and a heavy reliance on recreational drugs and pixie dust to make business plans work.
if he did actually know anything about Dubai he'd be on their case for using slave labor because even a teenager can get that one right.
There's plenty wrong with how Dubai treats migrant workers as presented in that linked story. But it's not slavery. Slave labor is not paid labor. I think the mislabeling is deliberate to hide that most of those workers are better off than if they never came to Dubai.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday January 02 2015, @09:50PM
As a conveniently located port city, Dubai acts as a major transit point between Asia, Europe and Africa.
It's not that conveniently located. It's a thousand kilometers out of the way, if you're shipping stuff to and from Asia via the Suez canal. A lot of goods don't get "transited". They get shipped directly.
Again, I don't see what oil has to do with it, unless you think that the end of oil will also spell the end of a lot of other major cities that don't have oil themselves.
Oil drives much of the trade that Dubai deals in. Either oil traded directly or goods purchased with oil income. How would a collapse of the regional economy not affect the traders?
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Saturday January 03 2015, @04:19PM
Even if many goods are shipped directly, many others go through import-export middlemen, and Dubai has proven a very attractive place for such businesses. If you've spent time in Africa or South Asia, this is readily visible from packaging that notes that the everyday product in question went through the UAE.
No, an advantageous position and attractive rules for companies drives that. Oil has nothing to do with it, and it's a shame you can't admit you were initially mistaken in assuming Dubai was an oil state like its neighbours. Now, the oil of fellow emirate Abu Dhabi did help to bail Dubai out once for debt incurred in its craziest projects, and if you were informed you would have pointed to that specifically, but the rest of the skyscraper building and business-founding going on there is, as I mentioned, very similar to that of Hong Kong, Singapore, and numerous other trade cities were oil isn't a concern.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 03 2015, @08:15PM
but the rest of the skyscraper building and business-founding going on there is, as I mentioned, very similar to that of Hong Kong, Singapore, and numerous other trade cities were oil isn't a concern.
But unlike most of those other trade cities, oil is a concern in Dubai. Not just its direct sale, but also goods purchased with the revenue from oil sales. What's the point of speaking of Dubai as a trade city while ignoring what it is trading and to whom?
If you've spent time in Africa or South Asia, this is readily visible from packaging that notes that the everyday product in question went through the UAE.
A position which competes with a dozen other nearby cities throughout the Middle East and Africa (for example, Mumbai, Karachi, Muscat, Basra, Aden, Bandar Abbas, and Mogadishu, not all these cities are currently competitive trade hubs, particularly Mogadishu and Aden, but the present never remains the same). Trade does tend to attract trade. But why will merchants continue to work out of Dubai when the oil market finally crashes?
In particular, I think in the absence of the oil industry, Mumbai will eat Dubai's trade. It doesn't suffer from being out of the way for trade between the Suez canal or eastern Africa, and South East Asia and it's an excellent gateway to the interior of India for trade from Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Further, Mumbai is backed by India which is likely to become a superpower in the latter half of the 21st Century.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @03:44PM
What a complete and utter waste of resources.
How much garbage will this generate?
Also, Epcot does not bring people in from other countries for the purpose of using them in their zoo exhibit.
They bring immigrant workers in who happen to be from other countries and happen to work for slave labor.
Imagine we used the same resources to create a sustainable living habitat?
Holy Fuck there just might be hope for us.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Friday January 02 2015, @04:39PM
There was a good article [vice.com] in Vice on the working conditions in Dubai. Pretty horrific.
This project sounds like little more than a temple to the achievements of gross, industrial age style exploitation.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by n1 on Friday January 02 2015, @05:21PM
Supply and demand. There is plenty of demand for non-union low paid workers with few to no rights in markets that allow for it (and also ones that legally don't). The supply is meeting that demand as efficiently as possible. Lots of people are making lots of money, the system works. People are just an asset class, and some other assets probably have more inherent value. A few barrels of oil is clearly worth more than a human life to the financially astute of the global population.
We don't really mind any of this, because it is at a nice comfortable distance, or it's in the kitchen while we eat front of house in the plush restaurant. We don't think too hard about the conditions of the workers who sourced and refined the raw materials, and even produced the end product; in any of our consumer goods.
I am as guilty of this as anyone. I have bought several electronic devices over the last month or two, mostly for my business. This makes it even easier/necessary to ignore other peoples potential suffering and oppression to bring me these goods, because i need to make a living too. So other people being exploited in dangerous working conditions is a problem for another day, while I make my money from their labours as much as my own; I end up being exploited and having to deal with unsafe working conditions too!
Then I encounter the situation that I need a pair of shorts, as i'm going on vacation (more hypocrisy). The shorts I found online were of a great price and worked with my decided budget. Then I had to stop and consider, the outlet offering these shorts was actually one I had previously decided to stop using due to their employment policies. The company make lots of money, but relies on the state to subsidize its low-paid staff's housing and wage top-ups, along with offering no guaranteed hours to the majority of the staff. Then I took it a step further to consider where the shorts were made, the conditions of the employees in the factory... Just trying to add up the potential number of people who had been negatively affected by this item being on sale seemed impossible to comprehend at the time.
I thought about it the most because of how cheap the shorts were, but the same consequences can happen for very expensive/premium items too. The line workers don't make more because they're making $200 pairs of shorts instead of $20 pairs of shorts. I wish 'paying more' could solve the problem because that would be relatively easy. Dubai shows this to me, you have all the luxury and excess you can imagine, an extremely rich country by every standard going. Yet their 'unskilled' workers are as oppressed as they ever have been and are basically kept off the books.
Paying a wage to employees where they could have a decent/secure standard of living, not only drops your score (how many millions/billions) against the other entrepreneurs, but you could also be enabling your current worker assets to become your future competition. As a capitalists/business owners why would we pay $7/hr to someone, when there are plenty of people always available for $4/hr or less. How they survive is not our problem, they just better be ready to work on time, with short notice and be prepared for 12hr+ days or we can find someone else.
Ok... i'm done ranting.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @11:26PM
And yet the only thing worse than buying the shorts and perpetuating the problem is not buying the shorts, all of the relevant companies going out of business and deciding their "assets" are redundant and ditching them. In the case of slave labor, probably literally.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @12:36AM
To avoid abusive labor practices, look for the union label.
Before 1995 [immigrationinamerica.org]
International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union [wikipedia.org]
UNITE HERE (after 2004) [wikimedia.org]
N.B. This industry is an ideal candidate for a cooperative.
Startup costs are pretty low.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @04:48PM
It's their resources, they can do whatever the hell they want with 'em.
(Score: 2) by CRCulver on Friday January 02 2015, @05:18PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @05:25PM
mod that response up please.
Hits the nail right on the head and buries the whole shaft in one go.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 03 2015, @01:36AM
They're only taking after every other country on earth.
Europe and the USA in particular are by no means in any kind of moral positions to be dictating environmental policy to anyone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @09:38PM
desalinization for water, which produces a hell of a lot of carbon
Perhaps the way they do it in Dubai.
OTOH, it's been done for over a century using only renewable energy.
This specifically mentions the year 1882. [dissidentvoice.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by CaptainK on Saturday January 03 2015, @02:46AM
Great link on desalinization tech, thanks!
Please mod up.
Your imagination is your only limitation to creation.
(Score: 2) by mrchew1982 on Saturday January 03 2015, @03:20AM
"Imagine we used the same resources to create a sustainable living habitat?"
Tried that. See "biodomes." Spent a hell of a lot of money trying to make a completely renewable, closed cycle habitat for a very select group of humanity. One of them got sick and was caught trying to sneak machinery parts back in.
Don't get me wrong, I fully admit that we could do a lot better with our finite resources, but... in the end entropy reigns supreme.
"Holy Fuck there just might be hope for us."
Nope. Resume your regularly scheduled despair.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday January 03 2015, @06:53AM
Ha ha ha ha ha.. just say some good insult or about political unpleasant truth about the head of state loudly in public and you WILL KNOW if you really are in Europe.
For the middle east there's an even simpler test. Make out in public! ;)
In Europe the police will smile or yawn. In some fucked up states they have nothing better to do than to punish people for stuff like this.
People really want to have grey sky, dimmed sunshine and bitter cold rain? ;-)