this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Socialism
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I imagine it would look in some ways like Burning Man. I’ve only been once a long time ago, but when I went we had social order without police.
On the extremely rare occasions someone was out of line, tearing down art or picking fights with people, random burners would step into the policing role and get the guy under control.
It worked pretty well. In our case it was a city of about 40,000 that only existed for two weeks, so it’s hard to say how it might scale. But that was my first exposure to anarchy as a governmental model, and it worked extremely well. As in, not only was Black Rock City functional, it was also incredible.
Keeping order is one thing, but police do a bunch of things no one else has time for.
Endless follow ups, liaising with social workers, taking long statements for inquests, or spending all day protecting someone's right to peacefully protest.
None of those activities seemed necessary, or maybe they were happening without my knowledge
That's due to the short duration of BM. There's not enough time for societal conflicts requiring maintenance paperwork - domestic violence and family breakdowns, child custody battles, litigation involving multiple parties with warrants served for trial discovery. BM is also a self-selecting population of (let's face it) upper-middle class people who are there for a generative purpose. It's like saying you don't notice the need for a welfare councilor or federal free lunch voucher program at a $100k/yr private school. That's not a problem that comes up in that demographic.