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If a Great Depression happened again, would people still stand together like they did during the penny auctions? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by Yezzey@lemmy.ca to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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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?

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[–] MotoAsh@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I hope you don't have to find out how naive that view is.

So you burn down the farm house. What about the fields? The equipment? The person who was kicked off the land already by then is still destitute. Now you've burned their old home down.

Now what? MAD only works when the damage can be equally devastating, and the community will already be devastated by then.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The point was more that a community can enforce that "if they don't get it, no one will", which I think would put a lot of companies off from buying.

It wouldn't help the first few people get their home back, but after a couple rounds, the big corps will see that they end up losing money when the buy properties that are sacked a short time later. If there's one thing that will make a company change its behaviour, it's making them lose money through that behaviour.

[–] MotoAsh@piefed.social 1 points 6 days ago

Again, MAD only works when the damage is equally devastating on both sides.