Dubai Is Not for Everyone. Here's Who It's Actually For.

The first thing I noticed in Dubai wasn't the skyline.

It was a bus.

May 2024, rush hour, somewhere along Sheikh Zayed Road. I'm in an air-conditioned Uber watching the city slide by.

And then this bus pulls up next to us. Old. Obviously old. Packed with workers - laborers, day workers, the people who actually build this place.

It was scathingly hot. Dubai in May is brutal. That bus didn't have AC. Or if it did, it wasn't on.

The windows were open. The men inside looked crushed. Exhausted. Most of them were sleeping, heads tilted at uncomfortable angles, bodies squeezed into seats designed for smaller people.

We sat at the same light for maybe thirty seconds. Then the bus pulled away and disappeared into traffic.

That image stayed with me. It still represents Dubai more honestly than anything else I've seen there. Not the Burj Khalifa. Not the Palm. Not the mall with a ski slope inside.

That bus.

Two Dubais

Dubai is sold differently depending on where you're from.

I grew up in China for the first 18 years of my life. Then I moved to Canada and spent the next decade there. I've seen how the East talks about Dubai and how the West talks about Dubai. They're describing two different cities.

From the developing world - South Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, parts of the Middle East - Dubai is the place to "make it."

The salaries are higher than back home. The currency is stable. You can send money to your family. You can build something. It's not easy, but it's possible. That's the pitch.

These are the people on the bus.

They come on work visas. They don't get health insurance. They don't get social benefits. They're on their own.

If they get hurt, if they get sick, if the job disappears - that's their problem.

Dubai is one of the only city-states in the world that lets you work on a visitor's visa. That flexibility cuts both ways.

From the West - North America, Europe, Australia - Dubai is sold as a tax haven.

Zero percent income tax. Free zones where you can set up a company for $10K a year and keep everything you earn.

A place to park money, buy real estate, live well for less. The pitch isn't "come here to grind." It's "come here to keep what you've already made."

These are the people in the hotels.

Same city. Completely different experiences. Both are real.

What I actually saw

I've been to Dubai three times now. May 2024, again for the Qatar Economic Forum in May 2025, and a few shorter stops in between.

The diversity surprised me.

My first Uber driver was from Iraq. The cab driver after that was from Ethiopia. Over a few days I met people from a dozen different countries - South Asia, the Middle East, East Africa. More origin stories in one week than I'd heard in years living in Toronto.

Toronto calls itself diverse, and it is. But Dubai is diverse in a different way. It's not diversity as identity - it's diversity as labor market. People come from everywhere because the work is here. Not because they chose Dubai. Because Dubai is where the opportunity landed.

You don't see many Emiratis in Dubai itself. The local population is small. The city runs on expats. That's the word everyone uses. Expat. Not immigrant. The distinction matters. Immigrants stay. Expats are temporary, even if "temporary" stretches into decades.

There's something honest about that framing. No one pretends you belong. You're here to work. When the work ends, you leave.

The surprise

I expected Dubai to be restrictive. Conservative. The Middle East I'd imagined from Western media.

It wasn't.

You can drink openly at bars. You can see two men holding hands and nobody cares. The malls are full of Western brands. The hotels serve pork if you know where to look.

It's not Saudi Arabia. It's not Qatar. It's something else entirely - a city that decided to be whatever it needed to be to attract money.

This flexibility exists because commerce is prioritized, not because the society is liberal in the Western sense.

The rules bend around money. That's the operating principle. If it's good for business, it's allowed. If it's not, it isn't. Simple as that.

That flexibility is impressive and a little unsettling. Dubai doesn't have a fixed identity. It has a value proposition. Come here, do business, spend money, don't cause problems.

I walked through the old town one evening - the part of Dubai that existed before the skyscrapers. Narrow streets, small shops, the smell of spices and shisha. Felt completely safe. Families out walking. Kids running around. Workers closing up their stalls for the night.

That Dubai felt more real than the Marina.

The money question

Here's my honest take: Dubai is a great place to spend money. I'm not sure it's a great place to make it.

If you already have income - from a business, from investments, from somewhere else - Dubai is excellent. The lifestyle per dollar is high. The infrastructure is world-class.

The weather is brutal for half the year but the rest is pleasant enough. You can live very well there for less than you'd spend in New York or London or even Toronto.

But making money in Dubai? That's harder than people think.

The competition is intense. You're not just competing with locals - you're competing with hustlers from every developing country who came specifically to work. People who are hungry in a way that's hard to match if you grew up comfortable. And they know the local culture, the local networks, the way things actually work there. I don't.

I can make money in the US. I can make money in Canada. I understand the markets, the customers, the systems. Dubai would be starting from scratch.

My conclusion after three trips: Dubai is a place to deploy capital, not generate it. At least for me. Other people might have a different experience. But I'd rather build in North America and spend in the Gulf than try to do both in the same place.

Who it's actually for

So who is Dubai for? Based on what I've seen:

It's for people with location-independent income.

If you run an online business, if you consult remotely, if your revenue comes from the US or Europe but you can live anywhere - Dubai makes a lot of sense.

Zero income tax means you keep everything. The time zone works for both Asia and Europe. The flights connect everywhere.

It's for people optimizing for lifestyle, not career.

If you're still building, still grinding, still trying to figure out product-market fit - Dubai is probably a distraction.

But if you've already built something that works and you want to enjoy the upside? Dubai delivers.

It's for people comfortable being permanent outsiders.

You will never be Emirati. You will never fully belong. The visa can be revoked. The rules can change. If you need roots, stability, a place that's yours - Dubai isn't that. But if you're okay being a guest, a well-treated guest with no illusions about your status, it works.

It's not for people escaping problems.

I've met founders who moved to Dubai because things weren't working back home. They thought a new city would fix it. It didn't. They just had the same problems in a more expensive apartment.

Dubai amplifies what you bring. If you're winning, you'll win bigger. If you're struggling, you'll struggle with better weather.

Where it fits for me

I think about the world in terms of geographic arbitrage. Not living in one place - living across a portfolio of places, each one serving a different purpose.

Toronto is my base. It's where I have roots, relationships, history. It's where I built my companies. I'm not leaving.

The US is where the money is. Most of my customers are American. Most of my opportunities come from there. I need access even if I don't live there.

The Gulf states are the third node. Not because I need to be there. Because optionality matters.

If I set up a company in the UAE, I'd probably choose Abu Dhabi over Dubai.

The ADGM - Abu Dhabi Global Market - is cleaner, quieter, less chaotic.

Dubai's DIFC is more famous but feels more crowded, more competitive for attention.

The real difference is who you meet. In Dubai, it's influencers and crypto guys and people launching things. In Abu Dhabi, it's sovereign wealth funds and institutional money and people who don't need to talk about what they're doing.

That's the energy I'd rather be around.

I don't need Dubai right now. But I like knowing it's there.

I like having the option. If things change in Canada, if policy shifts, if I want to restructure how I hold assets - the Gulf is a viable alternative. That's worth something even if I never use it.

The bus again

I think about that bus sometimes.

The men inside weren't making a lifestyle choice. They weren't optimizing for tax efficiency.

They were doing what they had to do to support families back home. Sending money to places where that money means something different than it means to me.

Dubai works for them in a way it works for me - but it's not the same way.

They came because they needed to. I'm evaluating it because I can.

That's the real divide. Not East versus West. Not rich versus poor. It's the difference between choosing Dubai and needing Dubai. Both are valid. But they're different games with different rules.

I have the luxury of choice. I try not to forget that.