Vera Verba

Recently a friend contacted me regarding an advert for an Honorary Consul position. My response was as follows:

Don’t even think about paying some scammers for something you can get for free.
Expat World Magazine in Singapore (free subscription) put out a CD around 10 yrs ago that included our favorite book, PT , several others & another small manual(a book by WGH the same author ) called *how to become an honorary consul*…

It explains everything how to get the job and what it entails & is not out of date because the rules of the game have not changed.

You need to have a nice house & be able to entertain visiting diplomats. You need a decent car, to present a decent apperartance, and should know at least one of the languages of your adopted country. If your wife is from there, so much the better.

There is very limited diplomatic immunity and you have that only in the course of doing your diplomatic dutues… In a case close to me that involved getting my adopted countrymen out of jail for smoking marijuana on public streets. In NYC for instance–if you are Consul there, it happens at least once a month if your country happens to be Jamaica. You go to court, post bail the form of a personal note, and usually the rasta guys get acquitted if they agree to go home soon. They may also let you issue visas, but never passports.
I know the little book works and you can get the job for free…Because I did it.

But, it took a lot of letter writing & one interview with the ambassador. Eventually I got special “CD” License plates and invites to a lot of classy parties…Theonly obligation seems to be to give a party on your adopted particular country’s independence day & maybe doing a little public speaking typically at grammar schools, on behalf of your adopted country… After many years you might be able to parlay it into a passport from that country.

The Great Dubai Crash of 2008-2009

Dubai real estate values will fall far more in the next 3 years than USA values than USA or GB values have dropped in the current sub-prime crunch. Further, they stand far less of a chance of coming back to present levels in our lifetime.

Why?

Because around half of the homes and apartments in Dubai have been “sold” to speculators who would never dream of living in them, but expect to flip them for big profits. They were in fact able to flip deals they bought “off plan-pre-build” for the last few years. But when too may people buy to flip, there is no one left to flip to. Sales have virtually dried up in the past two weeks. Panics can arise out of nowhere and destroy seemingly healthy businesses overnight. Compare with Bear Stearns.

With no end users in sight for all those offices, homes and apartments, all it takes is a few negative rumors & scandals to dry up speculative buying …It has already started. So far the regular media is not mentioning it. When the speculators all rush for the exits at the same time, the “investors” follow . Then banks and lenders are left holding the bag. As Dubai & International Banks in Dubai have made far too many “sub-prime” & “equity release” loans of 100% and more on many properties, it will be a near empty bag. With half or more of all the properties expected by me to be in foreclosure, it is difficult to see any other outcome than an abrupt end to the present construction boom. Then what? A big depression, & a massive exodus from Dubai.

Is this 100% sure? No! Nothing is sure. Something unexpected could change things. The rulers of Dubai might be able to pull a cat out the hat. There is one bright spot: The local Dubai banks & stockbrokers have been doing well managing the money of wealthy Arabs and handling many financial transactions. But their bad bets on real estate and their need for new employees is a drop in the bucket compared to the looming defaults.

Dubai has gone from a population of a few thousand natives a few years ago. They now have infinitely more commercial and residential space under construction than they could conceivably fill. The city is mostly half vacant apartment buildings –housing for 2 million expats, but they are not coming so much any more.. They supposedly have 25% of all the building cranes in the world set in place for new projects. In a word, they are grossly overbuilt and are continuing to overbuild in the face of slackening demand. The grandiose projects, “attractions” and amusement parks built or under construction are doomed to failure. They will be as empty as similar projects built a few years back in Brunei. Why?

Dubai is one of the most unwelcoming, expensive, unpleasant, uncultured places in the world to live.

Dubai won’t grant citizenship & passports to expats no matter how long they live there, legally or otherwise. The climate is unpleasantly hot to put it mildly! It is always so hot you can fry eggs on the sidewalk.

Local “justice” is badly skewed against foreigners.

Cracks are appearing in the whole economic structure as it is revealed that some residential projects that have been partially sold “off plan” will never be built. Deposits can’t be returned because the money has “disappeared.” In a Muslim country it is very easy to see that Christians will be the scapegoats to blame for whatever goes wrong. Would you take a chance at having your right hand amputated? That would be the punishment for being involved in “misplacing” the money of the wealthy local speculators.

No one in their right mind would choose to really live in Dubai without the opportunity to make a fast buck. For PTs who could find ways to profit from all the frenetic activity but were/are ready to move on, it was a fine place for the last few years. But the building boom will probably unravel this year. Even with no income tax, there is not enough there to attract as many wealthy permanent residents, workers, retirees, and an ever growing new population they need to keep it dynamic.

Dubai won’t disappear, but this will be a setback for the country. A lot of investors will get burned. Opportunity for some may be in picking up distressed homes or buildings at a tiny % of building cost. Unfinished buildings may be acquired for a song. Hi-rise apartments are more dangerous at any price. Why? When other tenants [or vacant units] in a condo won’t pay their share for upkeep, the ones remaining will be stuck with the bill –or no maintenance will be done at all.

Well guys, I could write a book on the subject, but just remember you heard it here first.

Gramps

BONUS: A comment from a friend:

I have to agree with you on this … I’ve long thought that Dubai, and to a lesser extent some other rapidly developing Middle Eastern states, have been placing far too much reliance on property growth without
anything fundamental to underpin it. Once the global economic situation worsens, which it will inevitably do, many investors in overseas property will be forced to retrench, which will mean selling at a substantial loss because of the already massive over-supply you mentioned.

The countries which will be affected to a far lesser extent will be those which have been far-sighted enough to diversify their economies into many different fields, not just property and tourism.

Although I’ve not been for a while, from what I hear from several very recent visitors, Dubai is now one over-developed high-rise hell, with massive pollution, noise, traffic problems and no sense of
community. A friend who lives about 15 km from the airport missed his flight to London a couple of weeks ago because it took him almost 2 hours to make the trip. Traffic was that bad; far worse than driving from central London out to Heathrow — and that’s saying something!

I also hear rumours that sales of development plots in “The World” have completely stalled and that there are substantial discounts on offer for unsold or resale properties in all “The Palm” developments.

The property market here in the UK hasn’t (yet) been affected to anywhere near the extent to which many believe. On average prices have only dropped by a couple of percent, and given the 150%+ rises over the last few years, this is insignificant, however as in Dubai the buy to let market has been severely affected with something like 30% of all new builds in many cities still standing empty and forced sale values down by 30/40%. This doesn’t reflect the true residential housing market though as many of these
properties, largely apartments, were originally way over-priced for the investment potential they were supposed to reflect.

It’s going to be a major economic blow to many Brits who have jeopardized their own homes because of high borrowing levels. They “invested” in Dubai. Now, where their apartments could be rented at all, they are getting much lower than expected rental returns. Thus they can’t service the loans on their own homes in England.

I recently came across a book review of “God Wants You Dead” by Robert Ettinger - a man who is sometimes known as the ‘Father of Cryonics’ and who is actually mentioned in the book. Here is the link:

http://www.cryonics.org/immortalist/january08/god%20wants%20you%20deadBR1pg.pdf

The review is a mixed one. I think he generally liked the book - found it interesting and amusing. However, he did think that there were some “technical errors.”

This is what he wrote be way of criticism:

The technical errors as I see them include flawed understanding of the problem of personal identity and criteria of survival, as well as the questions of intelligence, life, and Turing Tests, and the nature and centrality of qualia. They misinterpret the undecidability theorems. There is a bit of confusion in the discussion of free will. Their political opinions are of course arguable, and for some people will weaken the appeal of the book. They appear to use the “meme” concept uncritically. They define “identities” as “predictive models of behavior,” which doesn’t really fly.

So I went through the book again with these limited statements in mind, and tried to see Ettinger’s side of things. With just one notable exception, I did not find his criticisms to be very valid.

I think that some of what he labels as misunderstanding on our parts - for example Turing Tests and Godel’s proof - are actually situations where these ideas are being deliberately stretched or used as analogies. This does not indicate a lack of fundamental understanding of the base ideas, but rather an attempt to apply these ideas in new ways. I will be the first to admit that we might be wrong about how we are applying them (and would love to see more specific criticism on that score) but believe me, we understand the base concepts very well.

His issues with our definitions of personal identity and his concepts of survivability seem to originate with his attempt to constrain the definition of identity to one that will survive cryonic revival through molecular repair (the horse he has backed for immortality) but to specifically exclude a concept of identity that would survive uploading, or even rebuilding a body molecule by molecule from a recorded pattern - the later only because he is probably not comfortable with multiple copies of a single identity being possible. These complaints seem to me to be just a case of him wanting to defend his own ideas about how immortality might be achieved from competing ideas about paths to immortality, rahter than any well founded criticism for these posibilities.

He says that the political ideas expressed in the book are “debatable.” Well, of course they are, anything and everything is “debatable.” But I think what he really meant was that he found them to be extraneous - unnecessary to the theme of the book. On this I could not disagree more. The nature of collective idea organisms that we are trying to expose is manifest in the structures of all organizations, and the political views we express (that of the virtues of personal freedom over central control) strike directly to the nature of the types of systems perpetuated by collective ideas and the damage they do. While Ettinger may be more interested in the more specific theme of the nature of religious ideas battling newer ideas about possible immortality, the more general theme of the book concerning collective ideas is the greater truth the book is trying to shed light on. I believe that libertarian political theory helps make these more general points about the nature of collectivism more understandable.

I am not sure I even understand the complaint that we use the meme concept uncritically - perhaps because I have know way of knowing what his unvoiced criticism is. Does he not believe that the behavior of human beings is the result of two different types of information systems? Or does he want us to continually point out that memetic structures are not life in the same sense that biological structures are? Not sure what the gripe here is, except maybe again, that he may not like to think that electronic information systems might be capable of encoding intelligence, and giving too much credence to ideological replicators as a type of life might lead in that direction.

Identities being defined as predictive models of behavior is one of the core concepts of the book, so I wish his criticism had been more verbose than just “doesn’t really fly.” Having to guess, I think that he is considering the concept of his own identity - his self - and thinks that the phrase “predictive model of behavior” is too confining to put himself into. However, if he were to step one level back, and stop conceptualizing a specific identity, and consider what his brain is doing when thinking about any identity, I think he would see what we mean here. His concept of anyone else’s identity is a mental model of what that person is, and its express purpose is to consider how that person will react in various situations - it is a model for predicting the behavior of another. His own concept of self, is also simply an understanding of his own thoughts and behaviors - a predictive model about how he will think or feel in any given situation.

Perhaps what is going on here is that we are using identity to mean what he would refer to as the “idea of an identity” in much the same way as when we are talking about God we are talking about the “idea of God.” The self can be just as much an icon as any god

This becomes a very interesting distinction that points right at the nature of our thought processes. Is “the rose”, and the “idea of the rose,” the same thing? Since the rose that you perceive to be real and hold in your hands, is still only a model in your head, in some sense there is no difference. However, we still like to draw the distinction between the rose we hold in or hands and the one we imagine we will buy for our wife tomorrow - call one a real rose and the other just the idea of a rose.

Likewise, the concept of our personal identity seems more real than that of an imaginary character. However, the internal model we have of an imaginary character must be as real as our concept of the mind of another real person. In both cases we have no direct tangibility, but only an internal model to work with. We know we can be wrong about another persons mind and we point out in GWYD that we can also be wrong about our own mind. So how different is our sense of personal identity from that of our sense of another person or even an imaginary characters identity? Is there ever a real identity? or are all identities just “ideas of identities” - that is to say - predictive models concerning some person or thing - real or imaginary?

Finally, the criticism that there is “a bit of confusion in the discussion of free will” I must admit to as being entirely valid. I re-read that section, and it didn’t really catch the concept I was going for at all. So I intend to change it. I will go into this further in my next post, which will take the form of a rewrite of that particular section of GWYD.