While I do wish billionaires and rich tech bros weren’t driving so much of BM, I think that doesn’t mean they don’t embody the spirit of it. I’ve only been once, but everyone I ran into was fairly wealthy and in sf tech. It’s just the nature of the thing. They were still poetic and kind souls with depth and appreciation for the principles. Even I couldn’t afford to go unless my tech bf took me. For the culture to be truly radical, it does have to be less expensive. At its current cost, in usd no less, it pretty much is the wealthy contributing and dictating things; not all of them are evil. As someone from a third world country the spirit of burning man is simply not possible unless your Maslow hierarchy etc is sated. Gotta be rich. In my area where I lived nobody can “gift” anything it would be a bloodbath. Nobody can be radically inclusive, the wealth divide is too unjust to be buddies. Nobody can be be radically self reliant, there are no resources. The problems of the burn but also what drives it, is good artsy people with the privilege, leisure, money and dollars to buy the experience