# Dubai **Dubai** is one of the seven emirates of the [[United Arab Emirates]] and its commercial hub. What makes it a model for the exit movement is not its skyline but its legal structure: Dubai is divided into free zones, each with its own rules for the businesses inside. ## A country of zones The best-known is the Dubai International Financial Centre, founded in 2002 and operating since 2004. It is a separate jurisdiction for civil and commercial matters, with its own laws written in English, its own regulator, and its own courts staffed by judges from England, [[Singapore]], [[Hong Kong]] and other common-law systems. Firms there are guaranteed 50 years free of corporate tax and can be fully foreign-owned. The UAE's criminal and immigration law still applies. Historian Quinn Slobodian calls these arrangements "legal bubble-domes" in *[[Crack-Up Capitalism]]*. His point is that Dubai shows how a legal system can be assembled from imported parts and set down wherever a ruler wants it. Hong Kong was "one country, two systems." Dubai is one country with many. ## Why it's on the map Dubai is the nearest thing to [[Curtis Yarvin]]'s [[Patchwork]] that exists: jurisdictions run as businesses, competing for firms, under a hereditary ruler with no electorate to answer to. [[Próspera]] in Honduras was designed with Dubai as one of its three models. What the model depends on is a ruler who can grant, and withdraw, every one of those privileges. ## See Also - [[United Arab Emirates]] — the country page - [[Special Economic Zone]] - [[Network State Experiments Roster]] - [[Hong Kong]] · [[Singapore]]