Burning Political Economy

Burning Man is coming up. I just noticed that an old Wikipedia entry I made was deleted some time ago by an IP registered to Black Rock City, the corporate shell that owns Burning Man. So much for radical free expression! Here is what it said:

A camp’s radial proximity to the median axis and the central “Esplanade” street functions as a rough indication of social status within BRC. Social status is generally earned through multi-year attendance at “Burns” and social networking and is an interesting demonstration of emergent political will within a planned society. Considering that large portions of BRC’s inner ring territory are either explicitly pre-designated for theme camps or reserved by occupants through active blocking and positional denial to “tourists”, BRC’s emergent and dynamic political layout is becoming of great interest to urban sociologists. It is an interesting question as to how long the current political system can maintain its population growth without running into the classic aggressive factionalism experienced by most rapidly growing trade cities during their medieval expansions.