Still, Burning Man's relationship with government is in a golden age compared to years past. In 1997, when Burning Man was temporarily moved off federal land to a smaller nearby site on private land in Washoe, the county didn't sign off until mere hours before the event's official opening. Then it stationed sheriffs at the gate to confiscate every penny of ticket money to apply to the more than $300,000 in fees the county charged the organizers (the county returned a little more than $50,000 later, after admitting it had overestimated its costs). But after the 1999 gathering, Washoe County Commissioner Joanne Bond reports, she received almost none of the complaining calls about Burning Man she has become accustomed to. No government official seems willing to criticize the event on the record. That's probably because it's an economic boon for northern Nevada. In addition to the tourist dollars spent by tens of thousands of attendees passing through, about $150,000 goes from Burning Man directly into government coffers in the area.
And if the planned shift from cost-recovery to a $4 per person per day BLM fee comes true next year, the government will be even happier. In that case, the local BLM can expect to collect nearly half a million dollars from Burning Man. "They can build the Larry Harvey Visitors Center," Goodell marvels. "They'll all be drinking the finest Colombian coffee and gold-plating their shoes."
Indeed, the various governments involved seem happy to be getting the money, especially as long as they can report back to their constituents that, no matter how bizarre the event's nude techno-freaks, fire artists, and ravers might seem, it's all really quite innocent fun, no one gets seriously hurt, and the celebrants clean up after themselves. On the last point, in particular, Burning Man and the BLM are completely in synch, each advocating a "leave no trace" philosophy (an official cleanup crew stays behind after the festival's close to make sure nothing remains on the site). Barring any major fatal disaster, Burning Man's future in northern Nevada seems bright. The only cloud on the horizon is a still-inchoate plan from Nevada's senatorial delegation to turn the Black Rock Desert into a national conservation area that might preclude the festival. But, says Harvey, "Everyone's got to understand that we can't float their budget and everyone else's budget. This goose is not gonna lay that many golden eggs."
Burning Man is still in theory dedicated to both "radical self-expression" and "community"--two things that governments and their rules aren't necessarily best at furthering. To Harvey, Burning Man is more than just a party. But he's vague about exactly what it represents. Harvey talks a lot about the meaning of the event--the word sacred comes up often--and he once wrote an article in the neo-mystic magazine Gnosis in which he compared Burning Man to Rome's ancient mystery religions. But it's hard to be sure what he wants to come out of the event. In fact, he's proud that the event's central symbol--the Man--is enigmatic. "We never say what the Man means," he points out. "He's just there to provide a unified focus for the community. It could become a wonderfully coercive tool politically--like, `The Man doesn't like that, the Man says...'" We could make The Man The Man, right? But he stands beyond the social circle, like a god or the prospect of war, something that unifies everyone."
The Burning Man community does have several unambiguous rules, such as "no spectators" (everyone is supposed to be a participant who adds to the event's ambiance, not mindlessly gawking at other people's flesh, flash, or efforts). More important, there's no vending. It's not that Harvey is inherently anti-commerce. He's a committed urbanite and modern who recognizes that exchange is central to human society. "Try to live without commerce," he tells me. "Good luck. You'll be dead in a week."
Indeed, despite its no vending rule, Burning Man survives off the cornucopiac excess of its participants' daily lives. It's precisely the money they make elsewhere that provides them with the time and resources they need to survive their week in the desert, to build a temporary, explosively colorful, and varied Shangri-La far from home. Black Rock City has no flowing water and no plumbing. Its citizens make do with portable toilets (at Black Rock's highest population, 97 people per), a service provided by the organizers and paid for through the $65 to $135 ticket price (tickets are cheaper the earlier you buy them). There's no electricity either, except from personal generators and an official generator that can be tapped only with the organizers' permission.
Black Rock City is perhaps no more dependent on outside sustenance than any other big city, but the "no vending" rule makes all the difference. Everything you need you must bring with you, or convince someone else to share with you--making, as Harvey suggests, one week about the event's realistic limit.
In certain ways, Black Rock City is the anarcho-capitalism of economist Murray Rothbard's dreams (and, given his thoroughgoing cultural conservatism, nightmares)--only without the capitalism. Burning Man confirms that Rothbard's central notion that we could buy all the government we need on the open market has some validity. Burning Man charges its "citizens" an admission price and provides them, within the limits of the environment, the quasi-governmental amenities of plumbing and power, and the trappings of order and justice. It purchases all its other services, such as fire protection and medical services, from private and public agencies. Sure, the governments have more bargaining power than in a typical market. After all, if Burning Man refuses to pay the prices they demand for the services they insist on providing, they could probably prohibit the event. Still, everything about the infrastructure of Burning Man comes from market transactions, even if skewed by government power.
The real sticking point of most anarchist theorizing is law enforcement, and Burning Man is still working out the details on that score. The festival has a volunteer community of enforcement personnel, known as the Black Rock Rangers. Michael Michael (a.k.a. "Danger Ranger"), an original member of the partnership running Burning Man, is the linchpin and spiritual guide to the Rangers. Certainly, he is not your average beat cop.
As we talk in the front seat of a wrecked '82 Honda two weeks before this year's festival, stacked atop another junked car at Ace Auto Yard (the favorite junkyard for San Francisco machine artists), he tells me that Burning Man is a "cosmic cybernetic pulse engine. We prime it with information and it goes around the planet and people are drawn to it, and come out and build all this stuff within a few days and it explodes in a tremendous frenzy. It's an engine primed by information, fueled by experience, with a deep, annual pulse cycle. Burning Man has the ability to change the world, the ability to teach people a new way of not just surviving but thriving."
The enforcement of law--or "community standards," as the organizers would have it--at Burning Man is different from what you're likely to find elsewhere in the country. But it is not, despite the party atmosphere and the stated ethos of "radical self-expression," anarchy. Real cops--from Washoe County mostly--patrol Black Rock City alongside the Rangers, though the former rarely act without consulting the latter.
That's not to say it's your typical city, either. Consider one incident from this year's festival. A young woman rushes from her camp to challenge two Washoe County cops with a pump-action water rifle. She fails to get a good shot off. A cop taunts her gently, reminding her that she neglected to pump properly. Their authority so mocked, with what looks like a real weapon aimed at them, the police cruise on. In many municipalities such recklessness would get you shot. Here, the cops just keep driving slowly by the parade of nude, body-painted bike riders and the long promenades of elaborately designed and constructed theme camps featuring such compellingly mysterious and silly names as Temple of the Burning Question, the Tactile Portal, and Tic Toc Town.
This year, there were only seven arrests at Burning Man, one for trespassing (a truculent would-be gate crasher), one for assault, one for weapons possession, and the rest for drug sales. Burning Man officials stand by these drug arrests by stressing that they violate the community's "no vending" rule.
Lt. Will McHardy was in charge of Washoe County's police contingent at the festival. He tells me that for a couple of days the medical tent was seeing 80 or 90 drug-related cases a day. "Just because the incidents we became involved in were few, doesn't mean there weren't other problems we don't know about," he says. "There are lots of law violations out here. We're well aware there's an enormous amount of personal drug use taking place. We're concerned with people dealing in large quantities. Keep in mind, we're not out here to invade anyone's privacy."
No one wants to say it flat-out, but a policy of looking the other way--or, as Michael Michael puts it, "respecting Black Rock's community mores"--seems in effect regarding drugs, lewdness, and indecent exposure. That won't sound good to either the media or concerned constituents in the counties, so it is left unsaid. When I begin asking a county sheriff about the possibility of an official "see no evil" policy, he cuts me off before the heresy is even fully out of my lips. All laws of the county are enforced to the fullest, he insists. Drug wars demand not only casualties but hypocrisy. Still, to inculcate relaxed policing in a place overbrimming with illegal drug use is an accomplishment. Perhaps Burning Man is changing the world.
Editor's Note: We invite comments and request that they be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of Reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment for any reason at any time.
nfl jerseys|11.15.10 @ 12:51AM|#
jtrhye