[F]or denizens of Black Rock City, there’s an outside to the experience of hardship and scarcity. The Google multimillionaires who helicopter into Nevada for a week of self-expression and gift economy against the (usually) arid backdrop of a dusty lakebed enact a crystallised essence the American civilisation’s founding myth of abundance manifested ex nihilo and brought into being through resourcefulness and creativity. But in truth they’re play-acting at the ideal, having pre-resourced that resourcefulness and creativity via a much more cut-throat reality of material competition in which there are, unlike in Black Rock City, winners and losers.
And unlike their fellow-countrymen in the “flyover states” — the losers, in fact, in the real economy that enables the Burning Man fantasy one — most of Black Rock City’s citizens have the option at any time to pull the ripcord, and exit desert survivalism and gift economies for an air-conditioned condo in some of the world’s most expensive postcodes. Unlike those who inhabit that scarcity all the time, they can enjoy the generosity and camaraderie that comes with scarce resources, safe in the knowledge that they have largely foreclosed the risk of genuine material suffering or interpersonal violence that so often accompanies real scarcity.
My own [Burning Man experience], and the flyover-state tour that preceded it, happened before widespread fentanyl abuse blighted the American interior. The period since my visit has also seen the Great Crash, and widening income inequality. It’s a safe bet that in the intervening period the contrast has only grown starker, between those in the Land of the Free who can afford to play at trying to flourish in a world of scarcity, and those for whom that’s just everyday life.