A utilitarian defense of the UAE model is that it produces more total benefit for more people than a country like England, precisely because it is less committed to equal membership and more committed to functional exchange. The UAE can admit huge numbers of migrants without having to absorb them all into a full welfare and citizenship compact. That means more poor and middle-income people from abroad get access to much higher wages, more families back home benefit from remittances, more businesses get the labour and commercial environment they want, and citizens retain a stable, ordered, high-benefit society of their own. It is also better for its own citizens in straightforward material terms, because they do not have to extend the same level of long-term welfare support across such a large migrant population, which keeps the fiscal burden on natives lower. England, by contrast, is far more constrained because migration is tied more closely to settlement, political incorporation, public services, and welfare-state expectations. So even though England speaks more in the language of equality, it generates less aggregate benefit because it cannot scale mutually advantageous migration nearly as far.
That is what upsets people about the comparison. A state that is openly hierarchical, highly capitalist, and unapologetically unequal delivers more practical benefit to more human beings than a softer, more egalitarian society. The irritation comes from the fact that many people want moral legitimacy to track the language of equality, rights, and inclusion, yet the UAE shows that a system can reject much of that rhetoric and still create enormous material gains for citizens, expats, migrant workers, and migrants’ home countries. The provocation is not just that the UAE is right wing. It is that a country many assume must be morally inferior is, on utilitarian grounds, the more successful and more humane model.
The UAE forces apart two moral ideals that liberals and the left have long liked to imagine they alone could yoke together: equality and utility. They have tended to see themselves as the natural masters of both, assuming that the fairest society would also be the one that produced the greatest good. But the UAE disrupts that moral monopoly. It suggests that a society can reject egalitarian ideals internally while still delivering enormous practical gains to citizens, migrants, businesses, and poorer countries abroad. In doing so, it steals at least one of those moral claims, and perhaps both. The real discomfort lies in the possibility that the supposedly harsher model is not merely more efficient, but more effective at improving lives at scale than the supposedly kinder one.
Definitely something to this. I would argue there is a place in between UAE and Britain on the axes you are referring to, which would be preferable to both.
I make no claims to high quality artistic taste, but I actually like much of the architecture, and in cases where I think its off it will be because of just one "thing", like, the building that is in the center foreground of the photo you have at the top of the essay, its named the "Big Ben Tower", I think its too narrow, it should be wider, but other than that I think its decent (not great, just but pretty decent), and I actually like much of they "Neo-Futurism" (that is, I take it, the most common name for the style) office buildings; in regards to budlings constructed within the past 2 decades, I'd say their less shackled to the System's art types than the UK is, maybe that is a subconscious source of dislike (not saying it is)?
One day I hope to write a post about Neo-Islamic architecture in the Gulf states. Some of it is really good. I think we can make general criticisms of, eg., boring apartment towers, while admitting that a place like Dubai probably has plenty of attractive buildings, and that Britain’s modern architecture isn’t exactly inspiring. You also have the right approach in terms of looking at the buildings and making your own judgment, rather than deferring to a consensus which is probably biased.
This reminds me of an interview with Elvis I once heard; This was nearing the end of his time in Vegas and the journalist asked him: "But Elvis, isn't it just a bit tacky?" The King paused ... thinking about it ... before replying "Yeah, I'm very into tack."
"... in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera sets out a definition of kitsch as ‘the denial of shit’. Kitsch, he says, is art which aims to salve our metaphysical anxiety by pretending, metaphorically, that ‘shit’ does not exist - by, indeed, presenting to us a world that is purposively and studiedly perfect."
There is something to that, I think. Certain kinds of kitsch are undoubtedly tyrannical, imposing a blatantly artificial order on things without any hint of irony.
A utilitarian defense of the UAE model is that it produces more total benefit for more people than a country like England, precisely because it is less committed to equal membership and more committed to functional exchange. The UAE can admit huge numbers of migrants without having to absorb them all into a full welfare and citizenship compact. That means more poor and middle-income people from abroad get access to much higher wages, more families back home benefit from remittances, more businesses get the labour and commercial environment they want, and citizens retain a stable, ordered, high-benefit society of their own. It is also better for its own citizens in straightforward material terms, because they do not have to extend the same level of long-term welfare support across such a large migrant population, which keeps the fiscal burden on natives lower. England, by contrast, is far more constrained because migration is tied more closely to settlement, political incorporation, public services, and welfare-state expectations. So even though England speaks more in the language of equality, it generates less aggregate benefit because it cannot scale mutually advantageous migration nearly as far.
That is what upsets people about the comparison. A state that is openly hierarchical, highly capitalist, and unapologetically unequal delivers more practical benefit to more human beings than a softer, more egalitarian society. The irritation comes from the fact that many people want moral legitimacy to track the language of equality, rights, and inclusion, yet the UAE shows that a system can reject much of that rhetoric and still create enormous material gains for citizens, expats, migrant workers, and migrants’ home countries. The provocation is not just that the UAE is right wing. It is that a country many assume must be morally inferior is, on utilitarian grounds, the more successful and more humane model.
The UAE forces apart two moral ideals that liberals and the left have long liked to imagine they alone could yoke together: equality and utility. They have tended to see themselves as the natural masters of both, assuming that the fairest society would also be the one that produced the greatest good. But the UAE disrupts that moral monopoly. It suggests that a society can reject egalitarian ideals internally while still delivering enormous practical gains to citizens, migrants, businesses, and poorer countries abroad. In doing so, it steals at least one of those moral claims, and perhaps both. The real discomfort lies in the possibility that the supposedly harsher model is not merely more efficient, but more effective at improving lives at scale than the supposedly kinder one.
Definitely something to this. I would argue there is a place in between UAE and Britain on the axes you are referring to, which would be preferable to both.
Probably that place is Singapore
I make no claims to high quality artistic taste, but I actually like much of the architecture, and in cases where I think its off it will be because of just one "thing", like, the building that is in the center foreground of the photo you have at the top of the essay, its named the "Big Ben Tower", I think its too narrow, it should be wider, but other than that I think its decent (not great, just but pretty decent), and I actually like much of they "Neo-Futurism" (that is, I take it, the most common name for the style) office buildings; in regards to budlings constructed within the past 2 decades, I'd say their less shackled to the System's art types than the UK is, maybe that is a subconscious source of dislike (not saying it is)?
One day I hope to write a post about Neo-Islamic architecture in the Gulf states. Some of it is really good. I think we can make general criticisms of, eg., boring apartment towers, while admitting that a place like Dubai probably has plenty of attractive buildings, and that Britain’s modern architecture isn’t exactly inspiring. You also have the right approach in terms of looking at the buildings and making your own judgment, rather than deferring to a consensus which is probably biased.
This reminds me of an interview with Elvis I once heard; This was nearing the end of his time in Vegas and the journalist asked him: "But Elvis, isn't it just a bit tacky?" The King paused ... thinking about it ... before replying "Yeah, I'm very into tack."
There is a time and a place for all kinds of bad taste… tackiness, kitsch, all of it. One could say that recognising this is part of good taste.
Apropos kitsch: David McGrogan had an interesting piece today - https://newsfromuncibal.substack.com/p/the-denial-of-shit-international
"... in The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kundera sets out a definition of kitsch as ‘the denial of shit’. Kitsch, he says, is art which aims to salve our metaphysical anxiety by pretending, metaphorically, that ‘shit’ does not exist - by, indeed, presenting to us a world that is purposively and studiedly perfect."
There is something to that, I think. Certain kinds of kitsch are undoubtedly tyrannical, imposing a blatantly artificial order on things without any hint of irony.
There's plenty of hypocrisy about Dubai and the UK from the likes of Isabel Oakeshott.
https://iratusursus.substack.com/p/isabel-oakeshott-economic-migrant
https://thenewworld.substack.com/p/isabel-oakeshotts-very-rough-guide
I don’t know much about Isabel Oakeshott, but she certainly seems to rub people up the wrong way.