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 hypotheticals about trump.
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.
That mostly has to do with the end of WWI and the reparations they had to pay. It happened near the same time, but not really related.
That isn’t true. France, for example, had to pay a larger indemnity after the Franco-Prussian war. It certainly didn’t help but blaming it all on a fairly standard post-war treaty is literally a relic of Nazi propaganda.
These events are interconnected and pretending the Great Depression didn’t affect economies world wide is revisionist nonsense.
That’s also partly because they printed a ton of money for reparations for losing the first world war
???
The weymar hiper inflation happened almost 9 years before…
The great US depression was only a drop in a miriad of causes, it is not even in the top 3 of reasons of nazi getting the power.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic
A story my parents shared with me as a kid, allegedly from somewhere in family history was of an individual taking a wheelbarrow of cash to the store to buy a loaf of bread, heading inside and learning the price had further increased and upon returning outside finding the cash dumped in the street and the wheelbarrow gone since that was the (relative) valueble left unattended.
The US Great Depression directly lead to hyperinflation in Weimar Germany which lead to the rise of National Socialism.
Nope, it didn’t, the hiper inflation happened almost 9 years before.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_the_Weimar_Republic
Seems I mixed up the unemployment from the depression with the hyperinflation of the Weimar Republic.
I’ve edited my comment to say this
Part of that was linked to a great drought on US farms caused by overfarming leading to the dust bowl. That was a major part of the US GDP then. And 100 years later people still don’t believe humans can alter the environment.
The US at the time deported Latino citizens due to the increases racism/bigotry. Most of them were farmhands who knew how to work the land, better than the white farmers. The US realized their mistake in the middle of the depression and attempted to woo the same people back under the Vaquero program. The promise of citizenship was never fulfilled by the US.
I had to look that up. I’m surprised it worked even then.
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.
It won’t be on the public web, FFS.
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.
Says who? The Bush crash of 2008 destroyed a lot of lives, and the media never really covered it properly. My son still talks about how 2008 blew a whole in the lives of his entire generation, the way Covid did to the generation in 2020. The media acknowledged the decline of families during Covid, but not the Bush 2008 Crash.
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.
Why would that make banks less likely to take foreign money instead of more likely to take foreign money?
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.
Most of the tax delinquent auctions I’ve glanced at have a minimum bid of the entire assessed value of the property, which usually that assessment predates the tax delinquency so they end up being more expensive at auction than in normal property sales
I’ve not learned where to find foreclosure auctions listed yet but I would expect those to be similar
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.
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.
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.
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.
No he didn’t. They cheated, and we ALL know it. Perhaps the greatest crime of appeasement the Dems have done so far has been to let MAGA get away with the biggest election fraud in American history.
Election fraud?
Let’s be real here, majority of Americans are stupid, particularly the Latino and black male voters that swung right this election. You reap what you sow
Yeah, election fraud. You claim it was disgruntled male black and Hispanic voters. Others claim it was young people refusing to vote over Israel. Others think it was a massive vote boycott because they were pissed that Harris didn’t go through a primary process. Everybody is grasping at any explanation that is NOT Election Fraud.
The OFFICIAL excuse that BOTH sides like to point to, are millions of ballots that were straight Democratic tickets, with Trump at the top, and ALL in the Swing States. Supposedly, there are MILLIONS of them, so many that they turned the election.
Apparently the Swing States have lots of these Trump-loving Democrats, and they don’t live anywhere else but those 7 states. I’d love to see one of these people get interviewed, and explain their thinking, but I’ve never seen such an interview. I’ve never heard of such a person. I, personally, have never spoken to anyone who voted like that, although MAGAs, and weak Democrats, claim that it’s 100% true.
I don’t believe those people exist at all. I think the Trump/ Musk/ Putin Election Scheme was simple - just change the Presidential pick on enough ballots, in only the seven Swing States, to win AND, since they can adjust the switch parameters to any percentage they want, they made it big enough that he could finally be the first Republican to claim the popular vote in almost 40 years.
Rigging one election in only 7 states was pretty easy, once they had control of the voting machines, but it is far more difficult to rig hundreds of Congressional and Senate races. Doing that same sort of vote-switching would be much more difficult for Congressional and Senate races, where the elections are spread out everywhere, there are alternative methods of voting, and the vote counts are much smaller and harder to camouflage.
The best way to avoid getting clobbered in the 2026 Midterms, is to make sure there isn’t a 2026 Midterms. That will happen at the end of next summer. Expect all three rings to be chaotic at next summer’s circus, before the impose Martial Law, and suspend elections for the first time in American history.
Then our Democracy has officially ended, and it’s on.
Damn, so what you’re saying is that it still isn’t 50%. Crazy.
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.
Lol no.
I don’t mean exactly like that, surely there are newer tactics.
Lol no.
“People” is a very broad category. A lot of people in the world are kind, loving and caring and would absolutely stand together
The real question is: would they be allowed to do the same these days?
Spoiler: they won’t.
People also sold unwanted children, we going back there too? I know a lot of Trump voters are salivating at the thought.
Reduced monthly costs AND a lump sum of money? I might have a few I’m willing to give up.
Do they have to be your own?
I mean, is this really the business to be asking questions?
For sure! I’m pro-abortion so I’m sure as heck pro-auction. The birth having already happened is just a minor detail.
Besides, if a kid’s parents don’t want them, I’m sure that man in the nice blackout van will give them a much better childhood.
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.)
Had to look that up as I have never read the The Hobbit. Over my head.
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).
I don’t think the same mechanism would work these days, but we have seen people standing up to authorities on their neighbors’ behalf already; often people they don’t even know. Look at all the videos of people driving ICE away.
It doesn’t happen every time of course, but neither did the penny auction solidarity.
That noose only worked because it was a legitimate threat.
Penny auctions could happen today, but only combined with a similar legitimate threat. That’s the obstacle.
Wanna bet that there would be immediate police action arresting people for “credible threat to people’s lives”?
I’d take that bet.
The key words are immediate and action. Police don’t do that
That’s what makes it a great obstacle today.
Community isn’t like what it was back then. I’m guessing hell no.
can’t hang a corporation
Can hang whoever runs the corporation, though.
Sure if you can get to Beijing.
If you believe that every corporation is run by China then you’re seriously delirious.
Which is more likely, that someone made an offhand remark in an attempt to make a joke or that someone believes all corporations exist in China?
Jokes have that pesky requisite of, you know, being funny. Your statement can’t be asserted as such in any manner.
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’d imagine in such a scenario it would be pretty easy for community members to take direct action to make the property extremely expensive for the outside investor though. Releasing animals into the property, quietly installing holes in the envelope to allow for water and wildlife ingress, stink bombing, etc. Really anything that slowly destroys the value while preventing an insurance payout
Raise the risk profile enough and outside investors will go for something else
Bullying doesnt have to stop after the sale.
