I just read someone post on LinkedIn that his plan for saving money and building financial independence was to move to BAGHDAD
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@skinnylatte has someone suggested Beirut instead yet?
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@krazykitty Beirut between wars was a pretty fun place to live in, at least
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@skinnylatte but how expensive can it be to live there now, right?
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@krazykitty extremely! war and corruption and shortages makes everything expensive!
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@skinnylatte lol - I suppose this is a step up from Dubai
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@SRDas I don’t think he can afford Dubai
Frankly if you’re a foreigner and you want to make money and you don’t care about anything else, Dubai is a way better option (even socially)
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@skinnylatte @SRDas I'd steer clear of Dubai and UAE personally given that slavery is sanctioned there and I've read too many horror stories about foreigners being lured there with the promise of good paying work only to find themselves trapped.
Admittedly, such perils aren't unique to UAE/Dubai. Slavery is still sanctioned in the USA and it's probably not coincidental that billionaires such as fElon Musk have chosen both the USA and UAE as places to do business.
There's also fictional retellings of similar perils in films such as 孤注一掷「Gū Zhù Yī」(English title: "No More Bets") about white collar techies being lured abroad and forced to work for online gambling "fraud factories" inspired by thousands of real world tragedies.
There's tons of bad advice online.
Like the morons who said high paid techies with jobs in Silly Con Valley should live in San Francisco in the early blog days, because there's "more to do on SF". Or the bigger morons who claimed it was more cost effective to work in SF but rent in Las Vegas and commute by plane.
Minmaxing capitalism to try to make the most money for oneself with abject disregard for one's surroundings is not even fun in a video game. In real life, it's disastrous, like pouring fuel on the gentrification fires.
Still, doesn't stop people from sharing their bad takes online. Nothing ever stops that.;(
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@teajaygrey @SRDas I’ve lived in Dubai. For a certain type of person (white collar worker with a good passport and aversion to taxes), it makes a lot of sense. Not all of it is the desperate hell trap. That’s only for poor and brown and queer people.
White people from the U.S. and EU in particular have a ton of access and privileges over there. They’ll get senior and high paid jobs they’ll never get back home. But it requires that you not care about literally anything else.
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@skinnylatte @teajaygrey yeah I'm not exactly endorsing Dubai (definitely not for non whites); inlaws used to work there, and partner grew up there a bit, so I have some familiarity from travels too (though a while ago now)
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@SRDas @teajaygrey at the same time, for plenty of friends from countries *around* due to war and other displacement, it’s the best hope they’ve got for a stable life, especially with western immigration being utterly messed up right now.
Like everything else there it comes down to which socio-economic class and passport you have.
People from the west who imagine they may get fucked generally won’t unless it’s for things like ‘I must be a nudist’
