Yes as you say Dubai is _very_ different.
“they were spectacularly rich”
This fact actually really angers me. Someone I know from college is from the region, and his father has a company who makes millions from the Saudis. So this guy just buys whatever he wants, houses, cars, whatever. They’re not saudi themselves, but still, their money froms from the saudi oil money that we give them. The same oil money they use to fund mosques all over America.
Anything to do with the saudis just makes me mad. We really shouldn’t buy a drop of their nasty oil. Islam is cancer, and we are paying for it to be transplanted into us.
What can I say? Them’s the breaks. That region just happens to be sitting pretty on an exceptionally vital natural resource. It’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Sure, we should be using our own natural resources to lessen our dependence on their natural resources, but for a variety of factors, both political and economic, we don’t. Nothing changes until that fact changes.
Besides, in the past, Dubai’s principal export was pearls. So at least they have that. The Saudis? Not so much outside of oil, aside from religious tourism.