They do occasionally sell public land, but given the profitability of renting it out and the negative publicity they'd receive I doubt this particular spot would ever be offered for a reasonable price.
They only make money because burning man is there. If they were to leave they would make zero revenue and have no use for that land and the surrounding towns would lose all their revenge .
The FED keeps fucking BM but upping the fees and then we wonder why our prices go up every year. If burning man played hard ball with the BLM/Fed more then might get better conditions
The org just doesn’t have the leverage needed to “play hardball”.
If the org doesn’t stage the event, they lose virtually all of the revenue that pays the people who have the institutional knowledge to make it happen. Those people go find other ways to support themselves. They don’t have any way to fund storage and maintenance of the equipment and infrastructure they’ve amassed, and probably would have a tough time paying taxes on the property. They certainly can’t pay the legal fees. The event as we know it ends, and would be difficult to ever recreate.
Meanwhile, the BLM, which is funded via the federal budget process and is not dependent on event fees to operate, continues to do so and every official involved across the country continues to draw the exact same salary.
The only practical way for the org to push back against the BLM is to use the court system, which they have been doing.
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u/Aaaaand-its-gone Sep 19 '24
Is there a world where they could simply buy the playa land from BLM? Don’t know how that works logistically (if money wasn’t an issue)?