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.
Bullying doesnt have to stop after the sale.
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