TRIBE is down, so I'll post this here.

[Vinay Gupta]

Burning Man and Rainbow Gathering are two *entirely* different models of collaborative transformational community.

They have a lot in common, and they have a lot of differences.

In a "Rainbowish" setting, it might make sense to suggest that maybe the community should rally round, that we should have standards about sharing, etc.

In a "Burnerish" setting, that sounds a hell of a lot like telling people what to do.

I, personally, see definite and distinct problems with both models. Burning Man runs on an extremely expensive paid infrastructure provided by skilled professionals, and then illusion of a consequence-free community-run space is just that: in reality, BM is pay-for-play, an event production, and that truth can't be shaken.

I've seen some great stuff come out of Rainbow, particularly some video of a group of Rainbow folks in Colorado marching straight through an illegal police barricade in a highly disciplined show of community morals, but there are some cultural tropes that are associated with Rainbow which are not at all to my taste. On the other hand, my personal antipathy for  passive-aggressive communitarianism knows no bounds, and some people I've known who spent a lot of time at Rainbow *really* had that going on and it was a problem in dealing with them in other contexts.

I believe that if people want to pass round a hat to buy an organic gardening expert a share, they should be free to do so, but that the ORG, with its legal power to move money, should not participate in that kind of value judgment laden activity. As far as possible, the ORG should be simple, transparent, and make only those decisions it is legally necessary to, once the project is underway. The power should be pushed to the edges, and anything that can be implemented by individuals should be.

Buying a share for a useful person is an act in exactly that category. By the Principle of Least Authority we can see that something with less authority than the ORG *can* do this, so something with less authority than the ORG *should* do this.

I think that leaving this stuff to the people of the group to organize among themselves, rather than wiring it into the institutional bureaucracy of the ORG and the directors and the rest of it will:

1> get it done more efficiently

2> keep the ORG from becoming a fussy talking shop

3> prevent us from inventing a political power center which sets the cultural tone of the group. This is VERY important.

4> allow people freedom to act on their own initiative, rather than wasting time trying to lobby the ORG or the OWNERS as a political unit

5> make sure we understand, very clearly, from the outset, that the ORG works on cold hard cash, and cultural initiatives like paying for people we want there are organized at another level of the Island's structures.

That's really critical. Let people work out whatever side deals they feel necessary to subsidize things they want done, but that's not the ORGs job, and trying to make it the ORG's job will turn this into a massive mess from day one.

Additional expenses for things like repairs are one of the areas where the ORG can make financial decisions that people might really disagree with ("no, leave it, it's not broken" vs. "preventative maintainence is necessary!") and that's an area that we're going to have to think about very very carefully. Likewise any other area where the ORG is making decisions about shared property.

People disagree about basic, basic stuff. Whether it's OK to use one kind of paint rather than another on a shared building. Whether to buy another boat. How to schedule who gets to use the boat when. Etc. Burning Man runs partly because the line between personal and BMORG responsibility is so clear. But we're not at that level, we're actually a lot closer to a theme camp with land. Theme camps have all kinds of different ways of resolving things like this.

My point is that we do not want to become a Condo Association with a million fussy little rules. The Burning Man BMORG approach is very, very simple: "IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT, LEAVE" and "IF YOU THINK YOU COULD DO BETTER, START YOUR OWN."

Both of those options go out the window once you have shared property ownership, like the Island, which means we have to find acceptable common ground on any area where we would be legally bound together by shared property ownership. The simpler and clearer we keep the agreements, and the *LESS* the ORG does, the better.

There's a critical tension here between *legal* power - which the ORG has, which the DIRECTORS have - and the stuff which needs to be done for this to be a success. Contingency planning is really an ISLAND COUNCIL level task - that's something the people should be responsible for - but for this to be a salable project, to actually get a third of a million bucks on the table - the ORG has to step in and flesh a lot of that stuff out.

Real legal systems, from English Common Law through to the Buddhist Vinaya, grow from a series of insights.

"Wow!" somebody says, "that doesn't seem right! He should NOT be allowed to do that!"

And somebody checks the book, and sure enough, there's no rule.

So those who make rules meet, and they make a rule.

Then those who enforce rules let it be know than He is Not Allowed To Do That.

So my point is that inevitably the rules we pick to start with will change and grow. Some people will not like the changes made. How we resolve that, and how we compensate them if a change of rules makes them feel that their Island Share is worthless (i.e. no, 22 acres is not enough for us to have a 140db reggae rehearsal twice a day, sorry buddy) are going to be keys to keeping the show on the road if we get off the ground properly.

Having the clarity to get that stuff right in the long run starts now, in the embryonic stages of the enterprise. The ORG should be responsible for as little as legally possible, we should actually consider most of what's being done now as prep work by the Island Council, and the Island Council should *not* divert funds or other shared resources to any task which can reasonably and effectively be organized by individuals or independent groups like family units.

Now (and excuse the length of this, I'm on a roll, having just had a cup of hot chocolate) this is where we begin to factor in the capital expense of infrastructure, legal fees etc. Anything which is a shared resource is probably the business of the ORG or the Island Council. Shared resources can be easily abused, so we'll need to be aware of the need to moderate use by a variety of mechanisms, starting with common sense, and ending with regulation.

I think that this could be a framework for designing the relationships between the ORG, the ISLAND COUNCIL and the INDIVIDUALs. I think we'll need to be very aware of the conflicts of interest inherent in shared ownership of resources, and the simple fact that you only discover if your governance agreements work when an unreasonable person does an unreasonable thing.

 

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Vinay Gupta - Designer, Hexayurt Project - an excellent public domain refugee shelter system

Gizmo Project VOIP: 775-743-1851 (usually works!)              Cell: Iceland (+354) 869-4605

http://hexayurt.com/     Skype/Gizmo/Gtalk: hexayurt      Two's company. Three's Musketeers

[Thom O'Connor]

Perhaps slightly off-topic, but you folks seen this?

http://ecoble.com/2007/11/18/250000-bottles-amazing-recycled-mexican-island-paradise/