I owe you a piece about the commoditization of Burning Man, or rather the economic development of small businesses as a result of Burning Man. as I mentioned last week, the "jackrabbit speaks" newsletter had an extensive section of things one could purchase to get ready for Burning Man from burner friendly companies. The companies are a mix of small businesses and mid-size companies, some that existed before Burning Man and some that exist only because of Burning Man. for example, Crystal Springs Water Company in Reno and Acolyte both exist outside the Burning Man community. But they see an opportunity. I did a little research and Crystal Springs Water seems like a nice local small business. It's not like you are buying water from Bechtel or anything. They need the support of local organizations, like Burning Man, to keep in business. Acolyte has been in business since the mid 90's and has a number of charming statements on their website like this one.

"Since then Acolyte Systems Incorporated has actively constructed a powerful and diverse Intellectual Property Estate consisting of patents, pending patents, trademarks, and copyrights. Since allowance of its first technology patent in the year 2000, Acolyte has begun an aggressive marketing campaign of its protected intellectual property."

And,

"In the early part of this year [2001], we had a very fruitful trip to the Far East, setting up an integrated overseas manufacturing and sourcing system for all our components and finished products. Through multiple factory sourcing, we have been able to decrease many of our already low supply costs by over 50%."

I'm not trying to demonize this company. Many in the community know that the reason Acolyte became involved in Burning Man is because a local NYC burner was an executive of the company. Of course he has technically left and is living, or about to be living, on a raw food commune somewhere far away. But anyway, it's easy to see how the issues become complex.

Burning Man began as a spontaneous gathering, a party that has become a quasi-religious economic force. Many people don't see this as a bad thing; the messages are mostly positive and the economics of the system provide capital for many creative ideas and individuals who contribute positively to the world. The issue I take is that the world is in a bad place, and it is in a bad place largely due to values/desires for personal gain of the individual above the needs of a greater community, which includes land and animals. Many people take the philosophy that we must use the system to better the system. That is we must engage in the economic rules and slowly untangle the capitalist mess. We must use money to better our world. We must think in terms of capital so that we have capital to build better things.

It's a question of using an existing system to invent a new system, which i firmly believe is impossible. many insightful people, not the least of which is Marshall McLuhan, say the Medium is the Message. http://www.tao.ca/thinking/texts/mediumess.html

Though his analysis focuses on the impact of television in the lives of a literary culture, what he is getting at is the role of technology to extend it's own desires over human desires (if technology could have desires that is, he thinks it does, as if humans could have desires beyond the technology they create). The point could easily be extended to economics as Marx and others were happy to articulate. A class cannot act outside the rules of the class until it reaches some sort of elevated outer class consciousness that can only be realized after some semblance of true equality exists. The class always extends its desire to maintain the class, regardless of what "humans" say they want.

If we continue to shop, even from "burner friendly" companies we continue to assert the value that buying products makes our art and our appearances somehow better, and those that can buy better things make better art and are prettier. Capitalism is a self-feeding system. And even if we spend less, we still feed. And if we think we are spending somehow "wiser" the key to the equation is spending, and while money has no goal of its own (maybe), capital has a very specific goal: to grow.

An argument that stems off this one is that we could not choose to spend less if we hadn't created such a surplus. squatters could not exist without the refuse of millions of gap shopping, lamp-and-sofa-discarding consumers, and existing power companies to steal from. Vegans could not exist without a healthy tofu manufacturing industry. This is maybe true. And it's the problem I"ve been trying to solve, or at least understand, for a very long time. How does one transition from reality to ideal, noting the limitations and established construction of the reality? While i don't know what the answer is, I"m pretty sure it's not "directing your consumption to burner friendly companies." I think spending is the problem, and though I like many could most-likely never achieve this ideal, I prefer to buy as little as possible - even from politically responsible companies.

Going back to Burning Man... what i find most frustrating is that (admittedly, selfishly) the elements i loved so much, the freeform community, very much a camping trip combined with whatever you had lying around your house or found in the streets, has become a very large enterprise that not only sustains itself through an elaborate economic structure, but now sustains outside businesses, at least in part, and some certainly exist only for the Burning Man community.

*Cultural change cannot happen without economic change as the two have been intertwined since the beginning. * (This is more or less what my thesis, for school, is about)

It needs to be stated that Burning Man probably does not share the same goals that i do, and doesn't pretend to do so. Burning Man is not acting hypocritically. I'm merely trying to show what it is. Another spoke, however 'radical' in the capitalist wheel.



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