You can get a residence visa and open a company for around $20,000 which makes it an attractive option for the rich to flee from whatever oppressive regime they have at home. For Westerners the main attraction is no taxes and the glitzy lifestyle.
Funny you're saying this about Dubai and the UAE in general when they're known to be one of the most oppressive regimes in the region when it comes to political freedoms.
Oh, I forgot about all the liberal democratic regimes in the region. You must be talking about Saudi, Guitar, Jemen, ISIS, Quwait, Syria, Iran, Bahrayn.
Stability: The price you pay for authoritarianism you get in temporary and shallow stability.
I know that Dubai/UAE may seem like a RW libertarian utopia from the outside but they still are very mean to foreigners esp poor ones and there are still very generous benefits and preferential perks for natives that immigrants can't even cross their mind to ask out of fear of retribution.
Same as the Soviet Union, Red China, North Korea, Cuba, and so forth. Some people[0] mistakenly say 'socialism' for Western Europe-style social insurance, so I specified "intensely planned."
[0] http://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-minister...
"Intensely planned" means something like the USSR's five-years plans, and generally comes with state ownership of all companies. As far as I know, that's not what's happening in the Middle-East.
You need a special personal connection to the insider elites to run major companies in most of the Middle East. The decisions about economic initiatives and major industry are made by a small politbureau, though it isn't called that. A privileged class controls vast wealth and power over the lives of subjects for personal pleasure, though it may or may not be in their own personal names, just like under Communism.