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OT: The News Thread



Stories like this make me think of an ancient mercenary Greek general named Xenophon. And how during a retreat across the Persian desert, he stumbled across a massive walled city that was far beyond the capability of any contemporaneous civilization to build.

And yet that city was abandoned, in ruins and being buried by the desert sands, and none of the local inhabitants in the area even had any idea who’d built it.

I like to imagine that’ll be the fate of all these mega-project monstrosities built by slave labour and oil money in places like Saudi Arabia and Dubai. When a combination of lower demand for oil, global warming and the left-over oil money being squandered by princes and petty tyrants eventually causes a collapse of their society.
 
Stories like this make me think of an ancient mercenary Greek general named Xenophon. And how during a retreat across the Persian desert, he stumbled across a massive walled city that was far beyond the capability of any contemporaneous civilization to build.

And yet that city was abandoned, in ruins and being buried by the desert sands, and none of the local inhabitants in the area even had any idea who’d built it.

I like to imagine that’ll be the fate of all these mega-project monstrosities built by slave labour and oil money in places like Saudi Arabia and Dubai. When a combination of lower demand for oil, global warming and the left-over oil money being squandered by princes and petty tyrants eventually causes a collapse of their society.
Clock is ticking.
 
They're between a rock and hard place really. They can either splash the shit out of their oil money now to create the type of nation that they think will attract high value/productivity people that its necessary to have for a modern economy to flourish.

If they do nothing and just run out the clock on their age of oil, they'll end up with nothing.

They will likely fail though. At best they will cannibalize the best and brightest from other countries in the Muslim world but their government structures really don't lend to the type of futures they're trying to build. Takes a whole lot of hubris to believe that you can build the Jetsons future, and still rule it with an iron fist.
 
If ya don’t have a ohhh… say a gigantic natural resource distortion to define your economy you need intellectual property and a productive and innovative labour force.

That means property rights (rule of law), women in the labour force and strong secular institutions.

Wake me up when SA looks like the Netherlands or Germany. Awww hell, I’d take Honduras to start with.
 
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