cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/54239937
During the Great Depression, when banks foreclosed on farms, neighbors often showed up at the auctions together.
They’d bid only a few cents, and return the land to the family that lost it. Sometimes a noose hung nearby as a warning to outsiders not to profit from someone else’s ruin.
It was rough, but it worked, communities protected each other when the system wouldn’t.
If a collapse like that happened today, do you think people would still stand together or has that kind of solidarity disappeared? Could it happen again?
They wouldn’t have penny auctions. They would be virtual so they couldn’t be bullied into not bidding and the bidders would be global so they wouldn’t give a shit about the person whose land it was.
No. The auctions wouldn’t happen in person but online. Some reit or foreign money or both will bid more than the locals could afford.
Average folk probably wouldn’t even be allowed to participate. Only corporations with proof of excessive funds would be allowed to bid.
No.
50% of voting Americans deify a pathological lying pedophile rapist treasonous traitorous insurrectionist diaper-wearing convicted felon.
So, “No”.California was populated by desperate people losing their farms and homes. See: grapes of Wrath.
Penny auctions happened, but they weren’t the norm nationwide. The banks did forclose and people did lose their homes and sometimes abandoned them because the land was worthless during the dust bowl.
If America gets that desperate again, you will see pockets of solidarity and community and other examples of heartlessness and tragedy. We can’t know how much unless it happens.
…dude half of my neighbors want to see me killed because of things like me refusing to worship that dead neonazi that recently got himself shot in the neck.
They’d buy off my possessions just so they could see my reaction as they set them ablaze.
No, not in my country (US). People will not band together like that again, possibly ever.
