Session Three: Neoliberalism - Dave Hickey's Air Guitar vs Mike Davis' Fear And Money In Dubai

Las Vegas vs Dubai, The desert playgrounds.

I haven't been to either of these places and may even seem quite intriguing, even a dream to visit for some — Mike Davis describes Dubai as a travel guide book, however the truth is both destinations are sin cities with a bit of bling bling.
They were both built in large tracts of deserts emerging out of nothing.
Mike, through his writing compares Dubai to America and Las Vegas so it make sense to me to compare the two writers articles.

Dave Hickey’s ‘A Home in the Neon’ is an enjoyable more personal read. A well traveled individual who has lived in many diverse places throughout his life, but eventually has chosen Las Vegas as his ‘home’.

He enjoys the fact that Las Vegas possesses a very strange characteristic for modern America and a lack of a programmed social order. It doesn't matter where you come from, what your qualifications are. It is the cities of opportunities where American —and foreign— Dreams can come true. You just need to gamble and your life might turns around, you start with equal chance at the black jack table.

A city of sin in the more extreme descriptions. But here we have someone describing it as his home.

Dubai is also a Dream —as Mike Davis compares it to Disneyland— "Rubbing your eyes with wonderment", on the other hand in most cases it is not for the everyday Joe. It was created for the 1%. All about labels, Gucci, Cartier, extremes after extremes like snowboarding in the heat. Temptation is everywhere you look. A "Strange Paradise".

It is a paradise for architects and engineers also. It is like a playground. No rules, just dreams and nothing is impossible.

However, this dream comes as a price, other poorer  "lower class" people building these dreams for the rich and famous and they are not recognized.

Las Vegas and Dubai both in sheer scale of spectacle and a profligate consumption of water and power. At the scale of still growing consumption our planet will not survive. Might be good for the local economies, for the Sheikh and other minorities but it is actually causing us and humanity more harm than good. Why don't we want to see this? We like meaningless bling bling and we like to dream.