Washington Should Prepare for Saudi Arabia's Collapse

I've worked a fair amount in Saudi Arabia, and yeah, even by (low) Gulf standards it's a deeply fucked-up place and definitely a ticking time bomb. A few things people don't realize until they've actually been there:

- Not all Saudis are rich. Quite the opposite, there are destitute beggars on the streets of Riyadh. The women were the saddest side, kneeling by the roadside begging for alms in their all-enveloping pitch-black abayas in the scorching 45-degree heat (110+ F).

- The extent of the sex segregation. If you're female, you're literally a prisoner of your own family, as you can't go anywhere in Saudi without a car, women aren't allowed to drive, and women also aren't allowed to enter the vast majority of shops, restaurants etc on their own.

- Riyadh's population is projected to hit 10 million by 2020. It was originally a dinky oasis in the middle of the desert, with enough resources to support maybe 500 people. If anything ever disrupts the constant stream of imports paid for by oil money, the results will be apocalyptic.

- The state is deeply corrupt. Want a business visa? You can wait forever for the Chamber of Commerce to rubber-stamp your invitation letter... or you can pay a "facilitator" several hundred bucks and have it the next day. This repeats at every level, only with the sums going up an order of magnitude every time.

- "Hypocritical" doesn't begin to describe the opulence of the Sauds (the ruling family; yup, Saudi Arabia is the world's only country named after its rulers). For example, the massively lucrative alcohol smuggling racket is generally acknowledged to be run by one of the princes (of whom there are hundreds; Ibn al-Saud was such a horny old goat that he had 45 sons who survived to adulthood and had children of their own).

- Unless you belong to the 0.01% with enough wastah (connections) to flaunt the rules, there is fuck all to do in Riyadh. No cinemas, no clubs, no bars, not even shisha shops (they're banished beyond city limits). Can't drink a coffee with an unrelated woman at Starbucks without risking arrest, can't even go to the shopping mall on the weekends if you're a "bachelor" (unamrried male). So people either play a lot of Playstation and drive dangerously, go to the mosque, or go nuts.

- The education system is completely useless. All companies in Saudi are operated almost entirely by imported labor. I was working to set up a new mobile phone operator, with a motley crew of American, Europeans, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Sudanese etc, all hard-working and competent. And then there were the token Saudi dudes, who generally both had no idea about technology and couldn't speak more than few words of English... but each company had to hire a few to fulfill their "Saudification" quota.

Random stories if you'd like to read more: http://driftingclouds.net/tag/saudi-arabia/

Your points don't disprove anything.

1) many shitty economies have to debt-to-GDP ratios. Russia, for instance.

2) 640B in reserves is not as much as you think. Around a year ago Russia spent $1B per day trying to stabilize their crashing currency. They eventually gave up.

3) oil reserves don't mean shit, because with the current price we got pretty close to self cost. If you have 10 trillion of oil, but it costs you 9.5 to get it, it doesn't look so cool anymore. You actually listed some examples yourself.

Yes, there was a chart in the Economist last week that showed them at the top of the list in "defence" spending against GDP.

And Russia.

In the harsh world of realpolitik no one cares if Venezuela falls apart, except for the Venezuelans.

If Russia falls apart it's a serious problem for everyone, because it won't fall apart quietly or peacefully.

I think there is a common fallacy that people who you disagree with need to be paid by someone, otherwise they wouldn't be as they are.

I disagree with the poster but I'll grant that he may completely believe what he says and doesn't need to be paid in any way.

The same phenomenon works for pro-Russia trolls, for instance. I don't think they are "paid", particularly paid with money.