not entirely true but fair enough point, however, all the wealth until recently HAS BEEN built on the back the oil trade. They tried to diversify and my whole point was that the diversification effort was driven by people with no-brain nor vision...
Yeh Dubai was probably the main beneficiary of petrodollars. But a lot of countries are as well, even places like Germany which export a ton to the middle east. Actually most people can not easily pinpoint Dubai's success to a single rational factor and to justify the high property prices there people have to come up with fancy and fancier explanations. But actually, it's just a huge bubble economy based on the irrational assumption that the middle east will become a powerful and developed region with revenue independence from oil and dubai will be at the centre. The current dubai was not formed out of rational development. There is no fundamental industry there that justified building a huge city in the middle of the desert. The infrastructure there is irrational as well. They have things like a massive golf course in the desert which consumes unbelievable amounts of water to keep green, the entire city is fighting nature to survive.