A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
1–10 of 51 posts
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#2Awards are political.
People are human.
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#3The idea that you should provide a basic layout and some support and then trust the market is interesting. I wonder if people will try it on a real city.
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#4A comment I saw yesterday on Reddit did a good job explaining what Burning Man is: https://old.reddit.com/r/confusing_perspective/comments/d0wr...
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#5“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-control never to mention it to anyone. Not because I am not desperate for approval and prestige! Certainly, absolutely, I would want everyone I ever met to know that I had won a Nobel Prize. I just mean that it would be so much more satisfying (for me) if they found out on their own. Like I would have normal chats with them about the weather every day, and then one day they would say “oh hey someone told me the other day that you had a Nobel Prize, I didn’t know that, that’s amazing, why didn’t you tell me!” And I’d be like “oh that old thing, yeah, it’s not really a big deal, I never think about it.” Look, I do not know if I could pull it off. Would I occasionally drop cryptic references to Stockholm to try to help them along? Sure, of course, I am only human. But I really do think that I’d mostly be able to delay gratification, because when they did figure it out it would be extra sweet.
“On the other hand, in addition to never winning a Nobel Prize, I have never been to Burning Man, and it’s possible that if I spent a week in the desert with weirdly dressed strangers almost all of whom are either tech founders or hedge fund managers, I might just end up wearing my Nobel medal around and taking “Alfred” as my playa name. I assume Burning Man is mostly a weird form of charades where everyone dresses up as a hippie and tries to get you to guess what app they invented. I don’t know. All of this feels far enough removed from my actual experience that I am kind of groping in the dark here.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#6The idea that you should provide a basic layout and some support and then trust the market is interesting. I wonder if people will try it on a real city.
It's a little more than that. All the BM principles are there and necessary. In particular there's no typical "market", as BM runs neither on any form of money, nor on bartering, but instead on unconditional gifting.
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#7“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-control never to mention it to anyone. Not because I am not desperate for approval and prestige! Certainly, absolutely, I would want everyone I ever met to know that I had won a Nobel Prize. I just mean that it would be so much more satisfying (for me) if they found…
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Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#8“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-control never to mention it to anyone. Not because I am not desperate for approval and prestige! Certainly, absolutely, I would want everyone I ever met to know that I had won a Nobel Prize. I just mean that it would be so much more satisfying (for me) if they found…
From my experience it is usually not so easy to tell that someone is wealthy/influential, not least because of the unusual clothing often including face masks. Except for models which may be wearing incredibly detailed and beautiful costumes that just amplify their hotness.
For example - this year Ray Dalio was on Burning Man, whom I admire a lot, and I have no idea if I bumped into him or not by accident (probably not due to the scale of the event). On the playa he'd mostly look like a generic Caucasian old man.
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#9“It is not something I think about a lot, for fairly obvious reasons, but I would like to believe that, if I won a Nobel Prize, I would have enough self-control never to mention it to anyone. Not because I am not desperate for approval and prestige! Certainly, absolutely, I would want everyone I ever met to know that I had won a Nobel Prize. I just mean that it would be so much more satisfying (for me) if they found…
From my experience it is usually not so easy to tell that someone is wealthy/influential, not least because of the unusual clothing often including face masks. Except for models which may be wearing incredibly detailed and beautiful costumes that just amplify their hotness. For example - this year Ray Dalio was on Burning Man, whom I admire a lot, and I have no idea if I bumped into him or not by accident (probably n…
I think the point of Matt's column was to point out that it's a bit odd to slip it into every interaction at a place such as burning man, where it doesn't really add any context.
Re: A Nobel-Winning Economist Goes to Burning Man
#10Matt Levine did a hilarious piece on this earlier in the week!
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-05/goldma...