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this post was submitted on 11 Aug 2024
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There's something very funny to me about Burning Man purporting to be about people helping each other and everyone bringing something, which is why there shouldn't be any amenities maaan, bring your own water maaan, but the organizers still find it necessary to have infrastructure that forces you to have a ticket. I don't know what that infrastructure is, but it's got to be something, otherwise people wouldn't buy tickets. It's literally doing the "powerless help you, not hurt you!" bit.
Like it's just so fucking boomer-hippie faux-hallelujah "were all together, we're all a family" bullshit. Why do I need a ticket then? To pay for some paperwork? Sure, but why is it so expensive?
It's stereotypical or something I dunno. Ironic. Just a bunch of people forcing you to pay a bunch of money to be at a festival in the desert where the concept is we all bring something, which is why there's no basic infrastructure, except for the big burly guys making sure you paid to be here. Wouldn't want the poors present in our self-sufficient commune.
Like at this point it's just like every other festival, but the marketing hype makes people think they shouldn't have access to water.
Also
This reads like a someone on twitter trying to make up what a bunch redditors would think would be cool to have at a music festival.
Allegedly, you don't need to buy a ticket if you skydive in. I wonder if that also covers paragliders
The law, in its majestic equality, allows rich and poor alike to skydive into desert festivals for free
I can imagine some logistics issues with this one. I don't think you can skydive with multiple days of food and water on you. Upside is you can bring all the drugs you want if you parachute past security, so you might not need food if you're eating paper and shards for three days straight.
Just geared past the ears, grinding gravel with my rotating jaw whilst I fly into a massive burning strawman surrounded by billionaires and Chris Rock
Pilled to the gills!
This will be a sneaking mission. You must not be seen by the enemy. You must leave no trace of your presence. Is that clear? This kind of infiltration is the FOX unit's specialty. In other words, weapons and equipment are procure on-site... that goes for food as well. You'recompletely naked, just as your name implies.
I mean the thing is huge and presumably securing rights to the playa, paying for all the people to staff the thing, lay out the roads, do communications and stuff is expensive. But should only be a couple bucks or so.
I understand it has been ruined by techbros from SF that roll in with exclusive VIP trailers, Elon musk types basically. Maybe even musk himself actually. And with those guys came an increased willingness to pay and presumably elevated prices, and more exclusivity. So the same fate that happens to anything quirky and artistic. Capitalist shitheads ruin it for everyone.
I've never been but I wish I had gone when I was younger. Apparently 20 years ago it was pretty cool.
Among other things there's a post office, air field, presumably grants for artists, they probably have to pay the cops the be there (lol), and a bunch of other shit.
Idk if it was ever actually cool. I think there have always been, and still are, cool communities and groups within BM, but to my eye the big picture event has always been cringe.
Why would they want cops there? Are they stupid?
Idk if they want them or not, but the cops are there.
Land of the free my ass
I was going to say paying off the local piggies and for use of the land, but I did some research and it seems no, at least pre covid that was only like 300k of a 45+ million USD budget. Until 2018 there are IRS forms online showing expenditures. Seems like they have a lot of staff judging by the payroll figures, probably way too many of them are year round employees. during 2020 they were reportedly already begging for donations saying they were running out of money from "running a global nonprofit without our primary source of revenue" (source https://redlib.northboot.xyz/r/BurningMan/comments/iv0uza/your_daily_reminder_that_burning_man_is/ )
It's much, much more than that. Just the permit from the BLM is north of $1 million. We're also required to directly pay the salaries of all the cops that are there, as well as provide food, housing, laundry, cooks, fuel, and other amenities to them. The vast, vast majority of the ticket revenue goes to permitting and law enforcement.
You're a comrade so I'll give the benefit of the doubt and say it's believable that it's gone way up, but do you have any more updated numbers?
because the most recent info/reporting I could find was from 2018 or 19 and seemed to indicate the cost of that particular permit and the cops combined was under a million, in a year when the revenue was at least 35 million, and the graph here, while including a lot more in the permitting and fees section, still doesn't seem to bear that out either https://burningman.org/expenses/expenses-2018/
Here's the 2022 Form 990: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/452638273/202313179349309051/full. Just permitting and fees are at about $4.5 million. Most of the stuff that falls under "wages" is also not to BMP employees, but rather to law enforcement, emergency services (we also run a full service hospital that does not change for any services), airport, and sanitation (loooots of porto-potty servicing). The costs on all those things has gone up since 2022 also; there's been an ongoing lawsuit between the org and the Federal government for charging us so much with basically no explanation.
This will be my 20th year going, and I'm in a leadership position on the volunteer side of things. I definitely have a lot of criticism of the organization (and the event), but financial mismanagement isn't really one of them. They pay the executive staff on the low side of comparably sized 501c3 orgs, especially given the office location in SF. I think Marian is pretty out of touch with the ordinary burner, but she's not really getting rich off of it.
Burning Man is definitely a problematic fave of mine, but I do think it still has a lot of great things about it. Happy to answer questions as best I can without going into enough detail to ID me specifically.
lmao
is this where they put the piggies up?
I've never been, mostly because it seemed to have been long since ruined by tech bros by the time I was old enough. so I've no skin in the game but even if not "mismanaged" by the standards of large nonprofits, there's a lot of worthy criticisms of most nonprofits about scoping and growth mindsets and such. I like wikipedia as a project for example but their foundation's scope has grown so far beyond what it needs to be to effectively run and even grow, wikipedia and related projects. So when the time comes every year for them to beg as though the lights are gonna shut off if I don't kick ol' jimmy $5 it rings pretty hollow. Burning man hopefully isn't that extreme in terms of the ratio between costs to build and run and maintain the core services and the overall revenue, but it might have something similar in kind if not scale? While I understand to some extent the urge to be successful and let more people "experience the magic" or whatever, a corporate-style growth mindset is a bad fit for a community driven event. (edit: Idk, maybe thats the only way to organize it at any large scale in the US under capitalism, but I still think it sucks)
still not sure from briefly perusing that filing if this is accurate:
But I'm definitely out of my depth and don't care that much.
When they're in town, yeah (it's the motel in Gerlach). We also have to build, staff, and maintain a full compound on playa for them to use, complete with a 24 hour/day on-call chef. It's so fucking insane.
100% agree on the general criticism of non-profits. Burning Man isn't uniquely bad, but it's still a dog shit model for doing things.
Yes, lots of people are shitty and dump trash. It's also true that a lot of us give our time for free to pick that trash up all the way until October--both on playa and by the side of the road--though.
I knew both Bruno and Pat. RIP to both those legends indeed.
On their website they have something like 120 year round staff. These people are probably making good bank for the most part. $200k average? That's $24M there.
They build a temporary city to accomodate 70,000 people in one of the harshest, most inhospitible places on earth.
Also thunderdome fighting is so much fun. Idk about burning man but wasteland weekend has the whole set up from Mad Max so it's goofballs bouncing around on bungie cords whacking each other with foam bats while the crowd roars. It's good silly mostly harmless fun. If you don't know "Thunderdome" is a setpiece from the movie of the same name. The protagonist has to battle the deuteragonist to the death inside a large geodesic dome. Weapons of all kinds are strapped to the dome and the fighters are hooked in to bungie harnesses so they can "fly" around the arena. Meanwhile the crowd is climbing all over the dome shouting abuse and encouragement. It's a fun scene and larpers and related goofballs like to use it as a premise for boffer (safe foam weapons) fighting.
Well luckily the only people who go to burning man are boomers and psychopathic millennials whose brain is 50% stocks, 20% NYT, 20% real estate, and 10% voting