#Darin - if you read this far into these notes at all - you way underestimated how many people think they can start utopia 'on their own'

[catididnt]

Burning Man is less about “eat the rich” and the complete disregard for the natural environment that those attending have embraced while claiming to be so about community. (How can you claim to be community focused when your chosen location degrades the equipment of the people who attend? They’re very self-selecting about who attends without saying they are. Even the cheapest tickets require like $2K once you add in everything.) 

It’s more like the libertarian town that got invaded by bears. I felt for the original locals in that - only there are no locals at Burning Man. Everyone decided to be part of an event to “burn the man” despite how much they now cater to influencers.

“Eat the rich” is the wrong battle cry, but I don’t think we have one that gets more nuanced. You want to go after the people who are using up the resources at an unsustainable pace, that are setting the bar and selling out everyone else for their own enjoyment - How do we sum that up?

Anyway, check out https://www.jetfinder.com/burning-man-festival/ and their recommendations! 

I’m aware most of the 72,000 people there are not “private jet” rich, but pretending Burning Man doesn’t cater to “$500 is a rounding error” rich is silly

Seeing the notes on posts about the Burning Man Debacle™ and for fucks sake I am taking the phrase 'eat the rich' away from y'all until you can CORRECTLY IDENTIFY the rich

Rich is 'arrived by way of their private jet', is 'dropped $500k on a submarine ticket', is '$500 is a rounding error'.

'$500 dollars for a nine day event they must all be rich white people' no you reactionary rotten potato that is actually an entirely reasonable price for an entirely normal person to pay for an annual event! $500 over the course of a year is approximately equivalent to one big takeout a month! Being able to afford that doesn't make you rich it makes you probably not poor! The 'rich or poor' narrative is a false dichotomy that completely excludes the fact that 'richness' or 'poorness' is a SCALE! It's not fucking categorical! You don't one day magically flip a switch and go from 'poor' to 'rich' or vice versa you see incremental changes over time! Wealth distribution is a (these days, admittedly, rather wonky) motherfucking BELL CURVE! . The fact that capitalism is driving more and more people to either extreme of said curve is just evidence of a broken system, but it doesn't change the fact that most people should have a decent amount of disposable income!

The fact that many people don't have said disposable income doesn't magically make the ones that do 'rich' it makes everyone else poor. And the people at fault for the massive and growing percentage of people living below the poverty line are not the ones managing to stay above it, it's the fault of the actually rich, the ones stealing our time and our health and our wages and our future in pursuit of a number on a screen. And the rich are the only people you're helping by hating the people struggling slightly less than you.

When it comes time to 'eat the rich' you're going to be murdering dentists and librarians and scientists while the actually rich point and laugh from a safe distance as you solve their problems for them.