I am amazed by Abu Dhabi and Dubai. 

I know about these two because a relative of mine and her family live in one of them. These are modern cities with every fully developed aspect of commerce and technology.  How is this possible, when the leaders are first generation, live in tents, desert Arabs?

The answer is that both commerce and technology developed very slowly over 400 years, starting in Holland, but now both can be bought on the open market.  Anyone, anywhere can buy a high-powered computer, a jet plane, a modern hospital and a nuclear reactor.  The highest technology is on the market, including synchrotrons and Nvidia chips. 

What surprised me is the realization that commerce, too, can be bought as it is in Abu Dhabi and Dubai where banks, stock markets, courts, insurance companies, university graduate departments, medicines, tall building architecture, urban planners, communications industries, manufacturing and even research laboratories have been acquired on the open market.

That means that commerce and technology are very similar or may be the same.  

What they both have in common is that innovation in technology can only thrive where individuals have great autonomy and innovation in commerce can only flourish where there is no hereditary ruling class or a very weak one.