Mad in the way I imagine any colonialist ex-pat going mad, as empires threaten each other around you and you put on a white shirt and suffer through the heat. The same that happens and has happened since merchants and wealth-seekers have isolated themselves so much from reality (protected by the butlers and maids and drivers and security guards, never setting a foot in a local's house, neither a rich nor poor one) that finally they go all in and become regime apologetics.

Reminds me of Orwell's "Shooting An Elephant"

People I know who’ve done it:

• getting a drink (alcohol) is a major pain. Either underground, or some elite venue where rules don’t apply - and the jeopardy that goes with that. Really want to spill wine on a Prince? And there are a lot of princes.

• feeling of underlying state level threat if you mess up

• some workers are treated as literal slaves openly

• getting your money home can be troublesome. Check out Dubai airport and abandoned super cars

People who tend to fare better are very career focused and can ignore the above. Also if you or your partner are into the five star life.

Edit: formatting

To be fair, wasn’t the fancy-car abandonment thing just a result of people taking on crazy debt in a country that still has debtors prison, and then bailing out when they were predictably close to that jeopardy?

Seems like rational behavior from both sides in the end.

For sure. With a healthy percentage of “I have £100k and I can only bring £10k before I need to declare tax and my employer canned the project and my visa. Allow the car”

> getting a drink (alcohol) is a major pain. Either underground, or some elite venue where rules don’t apply - and the jeopardy that goes with that. Really want to spill wine on a Prince? And there are a lot of princes.

In Dubai you can get a drink just about anywhere.

> getting your money home can be troublesome. Check out Dubai airport and abandoned super cars

It’s really not difficult to transfer money out of Dubai.

Those cars are abandoned by people who couldn’t make their payments and fled the country.

those who left their supercars at the airport didnt have any money to send home - they were virtually bankrupt.

also, "there are a lot of princes" sure youre not mixing saudi with qatar here?

4000 Princes, over 10k members of the royal family, Saudi.