Wow, what a difference a couple of years makes, I was in Dubai a year or two ago and I remember thinking the whole place was in a giant bubble.   Some fellow colleagues that had been working there as expats agreed and they all wondered when the bubble would burst.

When I got back to the states from my trip, everyone was asking me what I thought about it and I told them all virtually the same story:  It is never going to work….it’ll collapse.

People were shocked that I would say such a thing and a few probed deeper by asking some poignant  questions about the matter and the best I could explain it was like this:

There are many countries that are trying to replicate the success of America, Dubai went so far as to try to replicate “the world” by building artificial islands in the ocean off the coast of Dubai.   Upon arriving in Dubai, I was checked into the hotel and presented with a giant 600 page book of the “do’s and don’ts” in Dubai (all of UAE actually).    I don’t remember all of the rules but a few of them consisted of things like:

  • You can’t consume alcohol except in certain “Western” hotels.
  • You can’t date any muslim woman (or man) if you’re not muslim.
  • You can’t eat any pork nor will you find any in the country as far as I could tell.
  • You can’t marry any muslim woman (or man I think) if you’re not muslim.
  • No public displays of nudity (note: nudity means showing almost any kind of skin)

Keep in mind there were 600 pages of stuff like this and the business rules were horrible.   In order to establish a business I think you needed the “sponsorship” of someone in the royal family.  The penalties for violations were horrific too.

Ultimately, I tried to explain to people that Dubai was trying to build a Western/American style environment but without any of the freedom (booze, drugs, sex, dating, etc).   I asked people to imagine Las Vegas without any alcohol, gambling, sex or anything fun and you’d understand what it was like there.  Some people got it and some didn’t.

Right now, there are 5,000 people LEAVING Dubai every day and if that doesn’t portend a collapse then I don’t know what does.    I would imagine the tall buildings will become the new “pyramids” of the Middle East.  Perhaps sand or water will bury them for a thousand years and someone will discover them in the future.    The situation looks pretty bleak.

But even there the mood was grim. The best-selling items were suitcases. At the rate of 5,000 a day, workers are heading home. Once, the world came to Dubai. Now all that’s left of the World in Dubai is hundreds of empty islands.

Very bleak indeed.