01/17/17
To preface, I am only using “Burning Man” for an analogy, and I am not a supporter of it because it promotes tribalism.
As I keep hearing again and again about the difficulty of convincing people of laissez-faire capitalism, I return to thinking about the vision of Galt’s Gulch. Galt’s Gulch was not a full country, only a club, but it is better than nothing. It would make it enjoyable for Objectivists, and it would show outsiders that capitalism works in concrete terms. I have an idea on how to make it legally work.
I offer the example of the Burning Man festival because it occupies a large territory on which things are constructed. These things range from artistic installations to large geodesic domes that protect people from the sand. The “Burning Man” organizers rent the land from the government, which is their excuse for requiring everything to be dismantled at the end of each festival. But I propose to buy a large chunk of land instead, so that all creations could be preserved on it. It would be possible to buy a large area of land, not in the desert but in a remote forested land, where it is still dirt cheap.
On the territory of the camp we would have a laissez-fair capitalism game for which the owning company of the camp would act as the “government.” It will be a physical version of the computer game “Second Life.”
I propose that if framed as a game, then everything that happens inside it would not be subject to barter tax laws, because whatever exchanges are happening between visitors would not be seen as barter. I think that to give this game legitimacy, the visitors would have to leave on the camp all new property they created, which would be held in their name until they return. Should the visitors choose to withdraw their property from the game, they would be able to, but it would act as their personal income (as seen by the IRS).
For instance, two visitors could each build a vacation house on the camp’s territory. If one of them is a carpenter and the other is a plumber, then each could help the other with part of the construction. Under ordinary barter laws, each would have to pay an income tax. I hope that if this is made into a game, then there will not be taxes.
The IRS would surely find a way to tax the owning company, though. For one, the tax on land ownership would have to be paid. However, this tax could be kept to a minimum by hiring competent tax advisors — something that a single visitor cannot afford. Whatever tax is due in the end, it will be paid from the camp’s contingency fund.
The contingency fund is filled voluntarily by the visitors, for services rendered by the game “government.” If there is not enough money in the fund, then the camp is closed for that year, and will reopen when enough funds have accumulated.
Or maybe the land tax portion can be divided among the visitors proportionately, because this part just can’t be escaped.
Finally, the OCON conference could also be held there. All the money that Objectivists now spend on the hotels for OCON could go into the development of living accommodations on the territory of the camp, in a centralized fashion, or by having people build vacation houses.
As a reference, here’s an article announcing that Burning Man buys a 3800-acre ranch for $6.5 million.
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/jun/10/burning-man-festival-permanent-location-nevada-desert
Some quotes from that article:
Burning Man, a hedonistic 10-day festival in the Nevada desert, has bought a massive property where it plans to build a year-round location.
…
For the longtime Burning Man community it’s a controversial decision: the premise of Burning Man is that it’s a city built and then broken and burned at the end of the festival as a statement about impermanence.
…
Elon Musk has said you can’t understand Silicon Valley unless you’ve been to Burning Man. As tech wealth has grown, technologists are building themselves increasingly luxurious camps and arriving regularly by private plane, which has led to class tension during the event.
…
Burning Man co-founder Will Roger said a few years ago that he wanted to build a utopia people could live in year-round: “What interests me is the experiment in a permanent community.”