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?
I think some communities would try. But it wouldn’t work. There wouldn’t be physical auctions. The banks would just sell to whatever faceless megacorp that was interested.
Likely not.
Am important part is that the local economy could be on board, but it is likely that some investor would see what is happening and buy the property.
Sincerely doubt it. Humanity is divided across all kinds of topics.
Black Rock will take it all. Already is
This is being done today. In my area. But it produces the opposite results you may seek.
There is a community near me. Very insular. It hits the national news every so often, but is always top of mind in my region.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=New_Square%2C_New_York
You may have heard of the issues with the East Ramapo school district. I’ll let others fill in those stories. Or you can search area news articles for the past 20 years.
My story goes like this: a community member stopped paying taxes. The property goes for auction. A neighbor buys for pennies because there is only one bidder. The bidder moves into the property and stops paying taxes on his first home. That goes to auction and the first party buys for pennies. And it goes around the entire community. Endlessly. Perfectly legal tax evasion.
One day, a developer scans the foreclosure pages and sees a property for sale. Except he doesn’t know the unwritten rules. So he purchases the place for a song. The community leaves some clear messages that he needs to walk away. He doesn’t get the hint.
One peaceful night, the 911 switchboard lights up. There are shootouts, break-ins, fires, domestic disturbances all over the area. But all are nowhere near the property.
With every first responder in the area tied up, the community got to work demolishing the home - by hand. They took that place apart with crowbars and handsaws in a few hours.
There were no witnesses.
And so the developer walked away. The situation continues to this day. Nearby folks trying to get a rational price to sell their home are assured by a visitor that there will be precisely ONE offer - that they should not refuse.
Lockstep communities are not always a good thing.
I don’t see that working today.
If it is a house, get good insurance on it that will pay out on the cost of the structure. If they demolish the house, keep the land undeveloped and invest the insurance payout rather than rebuild. Taxes will be low because the land will have dropped in price thanks to the local community. Continue as the town has to raise taxes because they are destroying rateable properties and insurance rates rise due to the increased likelihood of property damage. Hope for either pushing the locals out or getting a municipal bankruptcy to put the town under state control.
I mean that in the good kind of way, the kind that still believes people can pull together when things fall apart.
I agree. But the line can be difficult to see. Pulling together should be on the lookout for excluding others.
To me the situation you’re describing and the OP situation seem pretty similar; using threats to overrule the established system of property rights. But of course that system is how society decides what new people can move in, and something has to decide that.
well it probably doesn’t matter, since corporations are the ones buying it all up and you really can’t intimidate those soulless bastards
That was my initial thought as well, but after reading the other comment about how a community essentially sacked a house after the “wrong person” bought it…
The only thing that intimidates soulless corps is the threat of losing money. If it becomes clear to them that whatever they buy at auction will be burned to the ground, they probably won’t be very eager to keep buying.
They may not have a soul, but they do have a pulse
If a community decides the opposite it doesn’t matter.
They’d try, but there will be corporations bidding from thousands of miles away completely out of reach of any mob action these days.
If we reach penny auction status (and we will), it will be back to functional feudalism for most.
At that point the community can just refuse to recognize the sale and not let the company onto the property after the sale. The key to these kinds of protests is to make the fight unprofitable.
Yea, which will work for about 30 minutes until the police show up, who are already used to defending property over lives.
The government doesn’t have to be profitable. That’s part of socializing business cost, just like how many people that work at walmart are on food stamps. A corrupt government loves to subsidize the rich.
I thought the same thing at first. However after reading another comment here I realised that a community can essentially sack the property if a huge corp buys it. Not much you can do if everyone around wants you gone so bad they’ll commit arson rather than let you stay.
People from many countries have fought against worse abuse of power than just corrupt cops, heck this country was founded after fighting and defeating it’s colonial ruler in civil war, why can’t people fight back again.
You talk like people couldn’t just escalate further when they absolutely could. Need people to stop undermining collective action with their pessimism
all it takes is a single call from the buyer and the place will be swatted
Exactly what i was thinking
No, propaganda would convince them standing together is ‘woke’.
Also bots would insta-win any auctions by outbidding any human beings.
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In the vast majority of cases, certainly not. Anybody putting up any sort of threat will be… Policed. Anybody pretending they didn’t just lose everything - by design - will be policed. There’s a chance some people will be retroactively policed for making posts like this.
Unfortunately the problem now is corporations are people now and the rest of us are just commodities and slaves.
Everything is a lot more urban now, which is a big thing that would get in the way. A farmer in the great depression would have been seeing and getting to know their neighbors a damn lot, and outsiders couldn’t exactly take a rip out on a highway to bid, either.
No, the corporations learned their lessons from back then and they’ve successfully divided us along ideological or other lines, rather than class. In fact they’ve tried to fully erase class consciousness and I’d say they sadly succeeded.
Community land (especially farm land) has been pillaged by corporations and private interest already.
You mean the one with the national guard and ice out front with automatic weapons and hatred?
