When trying to solve problems, if you add constraints in certain areas, you can sometimes come up with really creative solutions you wouldn't have thought of before.
Let's not get started with the moralistic stance will we? Poverty is most often due to - especially in societies with precious little social safety nets - accidents of life, hereditarity. Very few fall deservedly, most are thrown or kept down
Dubai is doing a lot in the areas of digital technology, healthcare, solar energy etc. There is a vibrant startup culture and entrepreneurs from other countries are setting up shop in Dubai via the free zones.
Calling out virtue signaling is itself virtue signaling. Do you have something meaningful to add?
If we start to see stifling of legitimate, civil speech, then I think we have cause for concern. I'm encouraged that the statement specifically includes
We uphold the principles of the scientific method, of fact- and reason-based objective inquiry. Science is not a special interest; it is not optional. Science is a foundational ingredient in how we as a society analyze, understand, and solve the most difficult challenges that we face.
Looking (albeit briefly) online, I found one indication that free speech might be under threat at MIT:
This describes a broadening of the MIT anti-hazing policy as including "mental discomfort", which, according to the author's commentary is part of "the gradual yet radical transformation of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from one of the most robust academic centers of free speech and free thought in the world, to just another politically correct wannabe gulag."
That said, the text doesn't include any actual incidence of complaints of these restrictions being applied. If there were, I'd think they'd be included. Of course, that doesn't mean there haven't been such occurrences. Such data would add weight to such allegations.
It shouldn't be surprising though, because outsiders would only know as much as the media tells them. They have no vested interest, like the citizens do, in making an informed decision
