Why Capital Is Migrating East: Polybius, Plato, and the Design Logic of Dubai

This long-form white paper examines the structural logic behind global capital reallocation in the 21st century. Drawing on the political theory of Polybius and Plato, it analyzes how late-stage open democracies experience incentive drift, coordination overload, and institutional noise — and why designed systems with centralized vision and legal modularity are increasingly attractive to mobile global capital.

Using Dubai as a modern case study, the paper explores governance architecture, role differentiation, legibility, and structural coherence as decisive variables in capital migration. This is not a civilizational argument, but a systems analysis of how incentive alignment, predictability, and institutional design shape long-horizon capital allocation decisions.