Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akiselev | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

AFAICT all of these price hikes are a direct result of BM org behavior which has cost the event a lot of goodwill among the federal, state, and county authorities. The event is so big that Walmarts as far out as Reno section off a large part of their stores just for Burners and a significant portion of the Washoe County economy is dependent on the event. BM should have great leverage in negotiations but this leverage has been eroded over the last decade through unprofessional behavior and unnecessary antagonism.

The lawsuit against the county police was especially egregious after they couldn't get two negotiators on decent terms with each other into the same room. After that, the police fees went way up and they started trying to recoup their money by any means necessary, including enforcing laws that were never before enforced during the event. BM's principals of radical self reliance and care of the environment set it up to be a great citizen to the land, but relations with the BLM have only gone down hill despite the fact that BLM goes out of its way to support community uses of federal land like Burning Man.

This is a really different perspective than I've ever heard, and I'm intrigued. I've built up a lot of skepticism especially toward the Nevada authorities and their own good will (maybe not so much BLM) after hearing so many anecdotes of them making unreasonable demands and disinterest in even trying to integrate with the broader community.

And of course there's the standard argument that while BM should have leverage, they're also so wedded to the site they're essentially a captive audience. And all the authorities know this. So I'm not sure they really have so much natural power.

Anyway, I'm open-mindedly curious about your own perspective. But I still remain really skeptical about the natural good will of local law enforcement and especially that there was anything reasonable about them jacking up usage fees (e.g. the new Nevada live entertainment tax), which just feels like a plain old power play fleecing at heart.

> And of course there's the standard argument that while BM should have leverage, they're also so wedded to the site they're essentially a captive audience.

Then they should move. Really. Moving it even once would bring the local authorities to heel.

Montana and the Dakotas have a lot of space. I suspect some Indian tribes might be very enthusiastic about hosting something like Burning Man.

> I suspect some Indian tribes might be very enthusiastic about hosting something like Burning Man.

Yeah, I wouldn't be so sure about that. I get the feeling that BM might well and truly offend some of the elders. I could see a council or two wanting the money, but I wouldn't expect smooth sailing.

Montana would be terrible for burning man, the Dakotas are a much better fit.

Why would Montana be terrible? Montana may be socially conservative, but it has a very strong "Leave people the fuck alone to do what they want" streak.

For example, if I remember correctly, when the 55mph speed limit was being forced on everybody, Montana simply abolished speed limits on the big roads. When the Feds got pissy about that, they simply dropped the speeding fines to something ridiculously low with no license points.

They only want to leave you alone if they approve of what you do. For instance, they still have very harsh penalties for simple possession of marijuana and even medical marijuana still faces heavy opposition from the state government (there's a ballot proposal to reduce some of the barriers currently in place). It'd be extremely risky for Burning Man to be held there, IMO. Edit to add: this is from last year but gives some context: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/why-montana-going-backwa...

I'm also extremely skeptical of the NV police but I've heard stories from opinionated people at both extremes and many in the middle and I've settled somewhere in the center. I think both sides deserve a generous heaping of blame but it's up to BM org to make sure that the festival goers don't have to feel the fallout. They haven't done a great job of that. Here's where it gets complicated because there are several levels of law enforcement involved with decades of history with the event. Black Rock desert is also a hodge-podge of federal and local jurisdictions so it pretty much guaranteed a mess.

From what I understand, Burning Man was a curiosity in the 90s that the NV LEOs were largely ambivalent about but the relationship started to sour in the early 2000s when BM started really growing year after year. The county police did start to pull some sleazy power moves, I'm told due to an overzealous/tee-totaling Washoe county sheriff, but the BM org response was naive at best and absolutely childish at worst. The event was straining the police departments and other services in ways neither side had never imagined so I don't know if the police were power tripping or if they did genuinely need more capital to carry out their duty. Instead of capitulating to some demands and compromising like any other large scale event has to, BM org tried to get everything they wanted and in the process acted like "a bunch of big city Californians who think they're better than small town hicks" (I talked to a county LEO about this after a domestic violence arrest at an adjacent camp and those were his exact words). Mid-2000s is when I believe the relationship became antagonistic and after that there was pressure from law enforcement and the BLM to bring in more feds in greater numbers. Luckily, BLM and LEOs didn't try to use the atom bomb and block the event entirely but behind the scenes there was a year long struggle to get the event up and running on time.

After a while (late 2000s/early 2010s) BLM decided that the event had grown too big and put on another layer of bureaucracy that BM org had no experience dealing with, which again strained the relationship. Meanwhile, something happened that angered the feds (who were only there to show the public they weren't ignoring a oasis of drugs in the desert) and they started involving themselves with BLM's negotiations which further weakened and emboldened BM org. I don't know what really happened in the early 2010s but it all culminated in the 2012-13 lawsuit which cost the county millions and left a sour taste in everyone's mouth. After that LEOs went crazy with enforcement and tried to recoup their losses, which meant that all the nastiness behind the scenes started to spill over into the main event.

I've built up this perspective second and third hand over the years so take it all with a grain of salt. At the end of the day attendance and ticket prices skyrocketed, law enforcement became more and more obstructive, and the quality of the infrastructure didn't really improve but its hard to know what's going on unless you're in the org.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com