I’m fascinated by Dubai, the boom-town of the globalized era. Now, it’s the bust-town of globalization. Here’s a beautiful slideshow called off the deep end that goes over some of the city’s rapid decline. Dubai is crazy, though: they have the world’s tallest building, but public displays of affection are illegal. Thousands of ex-pat businesspeople move there to make a killing, to be part of something, but they’re doing it where debt is a jailable offense. Now there are thousands of laid-off construction workers who can’t leave the country. If there’s any place in the world that should be the epicenter of anarchism, of building a new world, it might just be Dubai. Of course, I’ve never actually been there, so what the hell would I know about it. But it’s funny, people are so convinced that America is the belly of the beast. But governments are so 20th century, ya know? It is (well, was) a globalized economy. Dubai might have been the peak of all of that.

There are apparently thousands of abandoned cars at the international airport, left as people flee.