The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand | The Failure of Networked Systems

185 comments on The Failure of Networked Systems

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Cherenkov on January 6, 2008 - 2:55pm

Between 1930 and 1935, about 750,000 farms were lost through foreclosure and bankruptcy sales. No small number. To say that most farmers kept their farms is an example of happy talk often used by the media. When using such an indeterminate modifier as "most," you essentially imply that "few" farmers lost their farms.

Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many. Farmers came together and blocked roads to farms up for auction, declared farm holidays (much like bank holidays) where they refused to participate in auctions, and generally threw monkey wrenches in the machinery of the corporation and its banks. The second reason there were not more foreclosures was due to the Frazie-Lemke Farm Bankruptcy Act (1934) which suspended farm foreclosures for five years.

As far as your declining to equate the subprime crisis with the Great Depression, you are right, so far. Remember, the full effects of the Great Depression did not settle in the day after the crash on Oct. 29th but developed over a year and a half. I have a feeling that, not withstanding the happy talk, we will see further problems in the banking sector, housing sector, and the level of consumerism. In short, all the ingredients for a spectacular crash.

Will we adjust? Of course. All of life, every second of it, is an adjustment. To say "we will adjust" is as meaningless as saying the sun will rise. The real question is how many will suffer and to what degree. The secondary question is who is responsible and to what degree must they pay. For the wing-nuts, the little guy is to blame for being so dumb as to take on such onerous loans. To the little guy, the bank is to blame for suckering him. What you will see in this corporate world is the privatization of profit and the socialization of loss. Corporations hate welfare when it goes to anyone but themselves.

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ericy on January 6, 2008 - 4:16pm

There was a phenomenon known as a penny sale however:

http://www.rootsweb.com/~iacalhou/1930.html

Father says more people are going to lose their farms because of low prices. The newspapers tell about the Farmers' Holiday movement and how it is spreading over the corn-belt. Today's story is about a farm in northwest Iowa where a mortgage was foreclosed and the farmer's goods and livestock sold at auction. The neighbors made it a penny sale. Everything the auctioneer offered for sale brought a bid of one cent. When the sale ended, the livestock, grain, machinery and household goods were returned to the owner for pennies. The reporter said, " One look at the hard, determined faces of men surrounding the auctioneer discouraged any outsider from raising the bid." At the town of LeMars in northwest Iowa, a district judge tried to stop a penny sale with a legal writ and found a rope around his neck and the other end over a tree limb, and there were plenty of hands willing to pull it tight.

I don't know how many of these took place, but my Dad remembered similar such things while growing up in Minnesota.

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SacredCowTipper on January 6, 2008 - 5:22pm

LeMars is an hour and a half southwest of here. My mother's parents lost most of their farm in the Great Depression to a local banker. That fellow is long dead and the grandchildren farm the family land ... but everyone still remembers how they came by the property.

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Samsara on January 6, 2008 - 7:17pm

Cherenkov, great points once again.

Point in fact, there are two reasons that even more farmers did not lose their farms. First, radical action. The corporate ideologues who shape our school system are loathe to point out that the depression radicalized many.

That what gov’s (I know it is in the US) fear the most. Millions of people in the street and radicalized. All the repeals of laws on demostrating, Marshal law changes, etc.
Listen to a lesson learned by the establishment put into words by G. Gordon Liddy in his reply to Timothy Leary.

Leary "...During the Sixties an undeclared civil war took place and the right side won."

"Yeah, my side," says Liddy. "And we're not about to let it happen again."

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2007/05/ghosts_of_tim_l.html

"We're not about to let it happen again.

THAT'S when the start of the control of all media to a few companies became an objective of the people who Liddy was talking about.

Notice how we in the states NEVER saw on nightly news nearly ANYTHING on demonstrations on BUSH around the world a few years ago.

Radicalized people in the streets are their greatest fear.

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