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A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
- ModsCtrlideas 7y agoAwards are political. People are human.
- tim333 7y agoThe idea that you should provide a basic layout and some support and then trust the market is interesting. I wonder if people will try it on a real city.
- H8crilA 7y agoIt's a little more than that. All the BM principles are there and necessary. In particular there's no typical "market", as BM runs neither on any form of money, nor on bartering, but instead on unconditional gifting.
- soneca 7y agoFrom what I read (never been there), "unconditional" does not seem the right word. There seems to be a social rule that a camp is expected to gift. So everyone there is gifting on the condition that everyone else is gifting too.
- H8crilA 7y agoSome camps don't gift much, and that's fine. But yeah the whole setup only works because so many people are giving things. For starters there would be no artwork if people didn't give - artwork set up in the playa or on a mutant vehicle is also a gift. It is unconditional in the sense that you just give without asking for anything in return.
- chachachoney 7y agoDrastic oversimplification. Many of the showcase playa art pieces are funded by grants supplied by the org. Also, while it contradicts the codified principles, there are no shortage of attendees who believe that the gifting thing is reciprocal/transactional and not unconditional.
- chachachoney 7y agoBM runs on a ton of conventional capital, both through the org and through the corporations that are the largest theme camps. Aspects of the experience a person has attending Burning Man, happen sans a traditional US dollar based market, though one could argue that all of those forces do carry over even if people aren't exchanging dollars on the playa.
- paxys 7y agoBurning Man is at best analogous to a gated community than a city. Most cities would have a ton of problems magically disappear if they could pick and choose who got to stay and imposed a high "entry fee" regardless of people's incomes.
- mopsi 7y agoA comment I saw yesterday on Reddit did a good job explaining what Burning Man is: https://old.reddit.com/r/confusing_perspective/comments/d0wrno/a_shot_of_burning_man_that_looks_like_a_solar/ezfbloy/ https://old.reddit.com/r/confusing_perspective/comments/d0wr...
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- droithomme 7y agoIt's a playpen for the ultra rich. It's quite similar to Epstein's Island in that regard.
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- dang 7y agoIf you can't or won't stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to HN, we are going to have to ban you.
- droithomme 7y agoYou really should ban me. For many many years you have been severely damaging this board with your extremist agenda and your endemic bullying while you yourself never post substantive comments and you slam down hard on those of us attempting to have a thoughtful productive discussion. Ban me Dan. Do it. You are the problem here. You're a vile totalitarian sociopath enabler who damages the world and makes it a much worse more dystopian place through the actions you have been obsessed with for many years. You are a bad person, a mindless drone promoting the agenda of the elite genocidists seeking to terminate humanity for their own ego and glory. And you don't even seem to benefit from it personally. Mesmerized by the power of the billionaire elite, you protect them at all costs just like the thousands that protected and continue to protect the legacy of the sex trafficker, pedophile and murderer Jeffrey Epstein. I wish I wasn't an atheist so I could sincerely take comfort that you and your masters will rot in hell. But hell doesn't exist Dan nor does justice. Only despicable enabling rats who hate democracy, open discussion, freedom, justice, and good.
- kgwgk 7y ago“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-control never to mention it to anyone. Not because I am not desperate for approval and prestige! Certainly, absolutely, I would want everyone I ever met to know that I had won a Nobel Prize. I just mean that it would be so much more satisfying (for me) if they found out on their own. Like I would have normal chats with them about the weather every day, and then one day they would say “oh hey someone told me the other day that you had a Nobel Prize, I didn’t know that, that’s amazing, why didn’t you tell me!” And I’d be like “oh that old thing, yeah, it’s not really a big deal, I never think about it.” Look, I do not know if I could pull it off. Would I occasionally drop cryptic references to Stockholm to try to help them along? Sure, of course, I am only human. But I really do think that I’d mostly be able to delay gratification, because when they did figure it out it would be extra sweet. “On the other hand, in addition to never winning a Nobel Prize, I have never been to Burning Man, and it’s possible that if I spent a week in the desert with weirdly dressed strangers almost all of whom are either tech founders or hedge fund managers, I might just end up wearing my Nobel medal around and taking “Alfred” as my playa name. I assume Burning Man is mostly a weird form of charades where everyone dresses up as a hippie and tries to get you to guess what app they invented. I don’t know. All of this feels far enough removed from my actual experience that I am kind of groping in the dark here.” https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldman-wants-to-be-cool-again https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...
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- H8crilA 7y agoFrom my experience it is usually not so easy to tell that someone is wealthy/influential, not least because of the unusual clothing often including face masks. Except for models which may be wearing incredibly detailed and beautiful costumes that just amplify their hotness. For example - this year Ray Dalio was on Burning Man, whom I admire a lot, and I have no idea if I bumped into him or not by accident (probably not due to the scale of the event). On the playa he'd mostly look like a generic Caucasian old man.
- beerdoggie 7y agoMatt Levine did a hilarious piece on this earlier in the week! https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldman-wants-to-be-cool-again https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...
- rcpt 7y ago> Burning Man is mostly a weird form of charades where everyone dresses up as a hippie and tries to get you to guess what app they invented This is great
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y agoWhat bizarre style of writing, as if Burning Man is some thoroughly alien concept and is being described as seen by the curious eyes of an awestruck anthropologist. Yes, it's believable that this professor found something of interest in the way Burning Man organizes itself but did we real need paragraphs upon paragraphs of this woo-woo style writing?
- perl4ever 7y agoThe cumulative attendance of Burning Man since 1986 is around 1 million people, so that's about the maximum number of people that could have experienced it, if nobody went more than once - but of course, people have, so the real number of unique attendees is lower. ...that means more than 99.7% of the US, and 99.99% of the world has never gone and it is thoroughly alien to them. So a bemused anthropologist seems like the appropriate POV for a general audience.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago> 99.99% of the has never gone and it is thoroughly alien to them Bit of a false dichotomy. Surely there's a bunch of people who are familiar with Burning Man from photos and videos online but haven't attended personally.
- perl4ever 7y agoI imagine you could argue the opposite just as easily. I first heard of it many years ago, but seeing a few photos doesn't mean someone is "familiar" with it from an anthropological perspective. Especially since presumably it's changed a lot over the years.
- TheSpiceIsLife 7y agoRight. I just meant that if you’ve read about it, it probably ain’t thoroughly alien to you.
- chachachoney 7y agoAnother reason to increase nytimes' Gell-Mann amnesia score. The word "placement" isn't found once in the article, nor is there any mention of the actual significant and broad machinations that the org goes through to plan the city every year. However, the word "Nobel" appears nearly a dozen times.
- kinkrtyavimoodh 7y agoNYT has become absolutely terrible about these things. Everything is written in a subtle propaganda style writing.
- hndamien 7y agoThere is no Economics Nobel prize.
- hndamien 7y agoFor the down voters, it is "The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel". It is distinctly not a Nobel prize. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Economic_Sciences https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Memorial_Prize_in_Econom...
- soneca 7y agoI would assume that most of downvoters know this. They are not downvoting because they think you are factually wrong, they are downvoting because your comment was just pedantic and doesn't add anything to the conversation.
- hndamien 7y agoThe entire intention of the mentioning of the "Nobel winning Economist" is to convey an authority that doesn't exist. I feel anybody relying on this should also have it pointed out that such implied authority is false.
- detaro 7y agoThe "authority" of the money originally coming from a different source? Because according to the wikipedia article you linked, that's the main difference.
- hndamien 7y agoThe authority coming from the Nobel name, which the money is co-opting. "The interest is to be divided into five equal parts and distributed as follows: one part to the person who made the most important discovery or invention in the field of physics; one part to the person who made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction; and one part to the person who has done the most or best to advance fellowship among nations, the abolition or reduction of standing armies, and the establishment and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry are to be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical achievements by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm; and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be selected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that when awarding the prizes, no consideration be given to nationality, but that the prize be awarded to the worthiest person, whether or not they are Scandinavian."
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- droithomme 7y agoI've been to Burning Man myself several times. Over the years it's changed a lot. Currently the ticket price is so high no one can afford to attend except the extreme elite. This is a well known phenomenon. When you go there are cool things but also depraved. In recent years the proliferation of orgies involving underage girls has become extensive. Burning Man is now a parallel of Mr. Jeffrey Epstein's island where the ultra rich come to abuse children. I posted before on this fact and the moderator elite that prop up the ruling class told me my post was "unsubstantive" and they were going to ban me. Good. They should. The problem of global elite and their sex trafficking networks should not only be hidden and anyone calling attention to it punished, but this should be done by legions of sycophantic supporters of the power structure of these vile global elite fascists. Moderators pull on their stormtrooper boots and go to work defending the agenda of the elite. For what exactly? For the destruction of the planet and of the human race, and of decency and humanity and compassion. Why? Many love evil that is why. They don't really need more of a reason. Those that speak the truth of matters are their enemies and they will go to the ends of the earth to destroy them and hide the truth. In the end though the truth becomes known and the enablers of evil are regarded with the appropriate contempt and disgust.