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?
Mod notice: This post is kinda in the grey area of being in breach of Rule 6, but it’s a good question with decent answers, so it gets to stay.
Stay classy.
Let it stand! I see it as more of a question of how people would react to such a disaster in modern America.
Plus rule 6 is mostly there to prevent this board from being flooded with questions about whatever annoying orange did in the past 24h
Wasn’t the Great Depression a worldwide thing?
It was but these penny auctions were mainly a US thing I think
Not really, the great depression in capital letters was almost 100% in the US.
The rest of the world had a recession, a bit tougher than normal but nothing near what happen in the US
You are forgetting the collapse of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis.
https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Depression
Their currency collapsed to the point, where a wheelbarrow of cash could not buy a bread.
I would say that is pretty significant.
The US Great Depression directly lead to hyperinflation in Weimar Germany which lead to the rise of National Socialism.
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.
Only corporations whose name starts with the word “Black” and ends with “Rock” will be allowed to bid.
Well if there was one I don’t think everyone would submit to the banks or foreign money.
It has already happen. Look what happen in 08. The banks did the foreclosures and then just sat on the properties or sold them in mass to someone else. There wasn’t any auctions on the courthouse steps for the local populace to bid only a dollar.
That wasn’t a great depression.
Because a depression is going to make banks sympathetic to the poors? Don’t bet on it.
A real depression wouldn’t spare anyone, everyone gets hit not just the poor.
That’s what’s going to make this one interesting. The cascade event for the great depression was a stock market crash which resulted in many of those wealthy people autodefenestrating, an event that the stock market was modified to prevent from happening in the same way in the future. It’s going to work the same as the last time for the poors, but it’s still to be determined if it’s going to hit the non-poors the same way.
autodefenestrating Thats a good word.
Why would that make banks less likely to take foreign money instead of more likely to take foreign money?
It won’t be on the public web, FFS.
Why tax actions are in some places already
It absolutely could not happen again, regardless of how organized the community was, because banks simply wouldn’t sell the foreclosed property in an auction of community peers if they weren’t getting good money for it, they’d auction it to REITs and corporations without them needing to set foot in an auction house.
…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.
No chance if possibly only because the government would immediately crack down and boot lickers would refuse to stand up to the capitalists and government.
I think things would be different during a great depression.
Why would that matter to the people on top who can avoid the worst and control the police and government so thoroughly why would they ever allow something “illegal” like this to go unchallenged when they don’t have to.
The mob rules.
Look how divided people are already. If you were close to starving, family suffering, do you think republicans and dems would get along? Not the ones I know, especially republicans. I know several that are ready for a civil war, actually prepping for it. One in particular I no longer associate with is hoping it comes to that.
I believe that we wouldn’t come together because the people at the top wouldn’t want that. They would stir up more drama to try and make the poor fight. That is what it comes down to. Make the poor war with themselves so the rich get ignored with their abuse of society. Always has been, always will be the motivation. Country, time doesn’t matter.
This post had nothing to do with US politics. I believe communities will come together in crisis if shit hits the fan.
I respect your optimism.
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.
It’s in our future again at some point, what’s going to happen when there are a million or more climate refugees forming wandering groups in the nation’s interior, like Moses wandering the desert for a place to stay and food to eat. I shall call this “retirement”
No.
50% of voting Americans deify a pathological lying pedophile rapist treasonous traitorous insurrectionist diaper-wearing convicted felon.
So, “No”.Only 40%.
Still terrifyingly high.
Trump won the national popular vote with a plurality of 49.8%, making him the first Republican to win the popular vote since George W. Bush in 2004.
Damn, so what you’re saying is that it still isn’t 50%. Crazy.
If you think the .2% matters I’m going to start listing propaganda talking points from the 2024 presidential election cycle.
lol.
Well, if digging a moat was the goal the US certainly is there. Canada will have a field day with European tourists during football world cup.
77,302,580 people is not half of America. It is 49.8% of the folks that bothered to vote.
More usefully,
In the 2024 presidential election, 73.6% (or 174 million people) of the citizen voting-age population was registered to vote and 65.3% (or 154 million people) voted according to new voting and registration tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
50% of VOTING Americans
It’s right there, 2nd line of the post you’re replying to.
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.
But the community might object. Things are a lot different during a depression, something none of us have experienced.
The ‘community’ can object as much as they want but the auction site (assuming it would even be a live auction and not some algorithm api thing) would sell off the property to some mega-conglomerate on behalf of the holding company and nobody Un the community would even be aware until the sheriff kicks out and locks the poor sap out.
I would imagine they just auction them on online nowadays :/ cutting out any sort of human interaction.
Nope. Capitalists would be frothing at the mouth, dick in hand in this situation. Hell they’re doing it now.
There are very reasonable arguments for some people in Trump’s circle that are intentionally wanting a major downsizing of the fed, and an economic collapse so they can buy up a ton of stuff.
I think things would be way different in a great depression.
Why’s that?
Because when everyone’s broke, the whole social network changes. People stop pretending the system works for them and start relying on each other instead.
They can’t. Yhey are fundamentaly broken.
blackrock would be there with their own paramilitary buying them up for the pennies
Blackrock and blackwater is the entirely plausible and terrifying outcome here.
They would try but they would be prevented by lethal force.
Damn y’all are cynical. I’m on the Hurricane Coast and people come out the woodworks to help one another after storms. It’s an awe inspiring thing to see so many come to mutual aid.
Two minutes after the wind dies down, dudes are roaming the streets with chainsaws, rolling in pickups, dragging trees with chains. Those that didn’t get sniped are actively searching for people to help. After Hurricane Ivan, men were going door to door, cutting trees off houses and cars. Power was out so people were cooking up their food before it went bad, grills hot, signs in the yard, “Come and get it!”
Another great example is NYC after 9/11. I’d visited Manhattan in 1992 and was utterly freaked out by how unfriendly everyone was. (Yes, I know, that was partly culture shock on my part.) After 9/11 they pulled together strong.
I’ve written about what all went on in Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina. Skipping that tonight as I don’t want to cry, but it was awe inspiring.
And all of those events, even in your example, were before we had the organizational abilities and reach of the modern internet.
I don’t think any of this is political, cultural or otherwise dependent on the times. I wouldn’t spit on my MAGA neighbor if he was on fire, but I’d work by his side if shit hit the fan. The vast majority of us jump after disasters, we evolved that way, one of the finest points in our favor.
Did the banks go out roaming the streets helping people?
I don’t question if communities would band together, I question if a community banding together could still pose enough of a threat to a bank or auction to pressure such a sale.
What are a bunch of broke farmers going to do to prevent a foreign REIT from buying the property in an online auction?You’re answering to the exact situation. I’m answering in more general terms.
True, but I also think that my exact answer likely generalizes to most situations where institutions are capitalizing on the suffering of people.
IMO this post isn’t about the willingness for people to help each other in times of need, it’s about the willingness (and ability) for the community to organize a defense against institutions that are using the situation to exploit the community.
Very well put.
This was before the federal government formed an (unconstitutional!) standing army.
I’m interested to learn how this is unconstitutional. As I understand it the clause that only allows apportionments of money to last no longer than two years is to prevent the military from coasting indefinitely without congressional approval
You’re right that the wording in the constitution requires re-appropriating the army every two years. The obviously short time period along with the words written outside of the constitution by the people who wrote it made it very clear what a disastrous mistake having a federal standing army would be. Those guys were right.
Is there anything that would reasonably mean “you may not have a standing army”?
I agree you won’t find those literal words in that order. There are plenty of other parts of the constitution that have been interpreted more holistically, but not the section limiting federal armies to 2 year stints. Funny how that works.
Nope. There’s no solidarity in America anymore.
Theres nothing like a Great Depression to rally the troops.
This one’s going down as The Great Desolation —so, not likely, no.
(Suck it, Smaug, you whiny pile of plot hinge.)
The GD had a somewhat clear culprit. It didn’t hang on half the country voting in the cunt who ended up causing the recession, there was a very distinct group that was removed enough from the average people so they could cooperate.
Today? MAGA is solely responsible for this crash, and the whole country knows it. Anyone left of MAGA, who didn’t vote for the orange clown, will NOT help MAGA. Those who cooked the stew shall eat it, and all. And I can’t say it won’t be deserved.
The GD had a somewhat clear culprit
Do you have a source for your claim? I just happened to study this as an economics/history undergrad. There’s a lot of disagreement.
At the time, “everyone knew” that it was the speculators on Wall Street who’ve caused it.
Now, how much truth is there to that - when in reality we know that a bunch of things contributed in a major way, like the Smoot-Hawley tariff (doesn’t that sound familiar?), gold standard policy fuckery, and so on - doesn’t matter. What matters from this perspective is that the people at the time didn’t blame each other. There wasn’t really a major political division that could or would be blamed.
This is a stark contrast with today’s situation where 1/3 to 2/3 of the country is directly responsible for electing the orange turdsack who caused the crash (depending on if you blame those who didn’t bother to vote).
