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?

  • RedFrank24@lemmy.world
    12·
    7 hours ago

    Absolutely not, there’d be some TikTok influencer that would be like “Broooo you can get land so cheap!” and buy it all and sell it for massive profit.

      • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
        6·
        5 hours ago

        He likes views, he’d make the farmer do some stupid challenge to win back some portion of the land, selling off whatever the farmer couldn’t “win”

        • AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world
          1·
          5 hours ago

          I don’t really know what he does, except that he gives stuff to people. That’s the full content of my Mr Beast file. That and a mugshot.

          • nomy@lemmy.zipEnglish
            6·
            4 hours ago

            Less “he gives people stuff” and more “he exploits peoples desperation for views.”

          • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
            3·
            4 hours ago

            I watched part of one video a few years ago because the title said something about crashing a train and I just wanted to see what kind of equipment they were destroying and how they managed safety. Instead my main takeaways were

            1. The videos have such insanely fast pacing I needed a proper break from the screen after skipping through a few minutes of it
            2. They had some guy spending shitloads of money to try to protect a pile of cash from a pile of explosives (and whatever cash he protected he got to keep), also dubious on safety but with the way they edited and of course basic knowledge of explosive safety (such as, everybody stay away from the explosives and don’t leave random explosives lying around in disorganized piles), I’m guessing the pile of explosives was entirely digital
            3. The train was in fact nothing special. Just some old equipment from the 80s that already have some examples in preservation. Also I’m guessing they weren’t aware that most American trains do not have much in the way of crumple zones due to FRA regulations because they really set it up for what would be an impressive crash for a car which is built with tons of crumple zones and instead the train got dented up as it bounced