Full at http://cheapmotelsandahotplate.org/2014/04/21/markets-problem-solution-2/
"A recent op-ed in the New York Times described the construction of “the mother of all luxury property developments,” on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, complete with branches of famous museums and a university. We learn that:
Saadiyat’s extraordinary offer to the buyers of its opulent villas is that they will be able to stroll to the Guggenheim Museum, the Louvre and a new national museum partnered with the British Museum. A clutch of lustrous architects —Frank Gehry, Jean Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, Rafael Viñoly and Norman Foster—have been lured with princely sums to design these buildings. New York University. . . will join the museums when its satellite campus opens later this year.
As might be expected, underlying this monument to excess is an army of laborers from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. These desperate souls arrive heavily indebted to recruiters and those who pay their passage, only to be brutally exploited by sponsoring employers, who confiscate their passports. It is a system of semi-slave labor; workers are not free to leave, even if they have not been paid.
There has been no shortage of architects and other members of the “creative class” willing to ignore the human misery and do the planning and designing, curate the museums, and administrate or teach in the university. The same has been true for buyers of the “opulent villas.” One of the “lustrous architects” cited above, Zaha Hadid, also designed the 2022 World Cup soccer stadium in Qatar. In the past two years nearly 1,000 south Asian workers have died building it. When asked to comment on these startling numbers, she said,
I have nothing to do with the workers. I think that’s an issue the government—if there’s a problem—should pick up. Hopefully, these things will be resolved. . . . I’m not taking it lightly but I think it’s for the government to look to take care of. It’s not my duty as an architect to look at it. I cannot do anything about it because I have no power to do anything about it. I think it’s a problem anywhere in the world. But, as I said, I think there are discrepancies all over the world."