Right now, in the generally squalid Arab world, you'll find four types of regimes:
(1) Dictators with oil (Iraq, Libya).
(2) Monarchs with oil (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states).
(3) Dictators without oil (Egypt, Syria).
(4) Monarchs without oil (Jordan, Morocco)
Numbers 1 and 3 are, almost by definition, unreformable: In essence, they have to be overthrown or made to see the only option is self-liquidation.
The second category -- monarchs with oil -- are also largely unreformable: They're basically a globalized version of the dhimmi economy. The dhimmi -- the non-Muslim in a Muslim society -- was obliged to pay the jizya, a special tax levied on him as an infidel.
When Islam in its heyday conquered infidel lands, it set in motion a massive transfer of wealth, enacting punitive taxation to transfer money from nonbelievers to Muslims -- or from the productive part of the economy to the nonproductive.
That's why almost all Muslim societies tend toward the economically moribund.
You can see it literally in the landscape in rural parts of the Balkans: Christian tradesmen got fed up paying the jizya and moved out of the towns up into remote hills.
For the House of Saud, oil wealth is a global jizya: an enormous wealth transfer from the economically productive world -- Europe, North America -- to Islam.
The Saudi state uses oil money as a giant welfare check to keep its people quiescent and too pampered to revolt. You can say the same about many of the Gulf statelets.
But Dubai, with less oil than its fellow emirates, can't depend on the global oil jizya. It has had to diversify into banking and tourism: these days it's like Hong Kong with an en suite Lawrence of Arabia theme park. Unlike almost anywhere else in the Arab world, it's moving toward a nondeformed socioeconomic structure. Next to Morocco, it's about the best shot at real reform among the existing regimes. To be sure, they're not so hot for Jews, and there are some pretty disgusting books for sale in their stores. But so what? You can say the same about Paris and London.
(1) Dictators with oil (Iraq, Libya).
(2) Monarchs with oil (Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states).
(3) Dictators without oil (Egypt, Syria).
(4) Monarchs without oil (Jordan, Morocco)
Numbers 1 and 3 are, almost by definition, unreformable: In essence, they have to be overthrown or made to see the only option is self-liquidation.
The second category -- monarchs with oil -- are also largely unreformable: They're basically a globalized version of the dhimmi economy. The dhimmi -- the non-Muslim in a Muslim society -- was obliged to pay the jizya, a special tax levied on him as an infidel.
When Islam in its heyday conquered infidel lands, it set in motion a massive transfer of wealth, enacting punitive taxation to transfer money from nonbelievers to Muslims -- or from the productive part of the economy to the nonproductive.
That's why almost all Muslim societies tend toward the economically moribund.
You can see it literally in the landscape in rural parts of the Balkans: Christian tradesmen got fed up paying the jizya and moved out of the towns up into remote hills.
For the House of Saud, oil wealth is a global jizya: an enormous wealth transfer from the economically productive world -- Europe, North America -- to Islam.
The Saudi state uses oil money as a giant welfare check to keep its people quiescent and too pampered to revolt. You can say the same about many of the Gulf statelets.
But Dubai, with less oil than its fellow emirates, can't depend on the global oil jizya. It has had to diversify into banking and tourism: these days it's like Hong Kong with an en suite Lawrence of Arabia theme park. Unlike almost anywhere else in the Arab world, it's moving toward a nondeformed socioeconomic structure. Next to Morocco, it's about the best shot at real reform among the existing regimes. To be sure, they're not so hot for Jews, and there are some pretty disgusting books for sale in their stores. But so what? You can say the same about Paris and London.