Community dedicated to the world of Harry Potter.
Mostly focused on books and fan creations, movie content is accepted but should not overwhelm the community.
Owning a house doesn't mean you have money, if you inherit a house and the mortgage is paid the base payments are smaller than most apartments. You need to look at the state the house is in, if the person doesn't have the money necessary to maintain basic things like changing a broken water heater or fixing their leaky roof then you know these people are pretty poor, they just got lucky once and ended up with a house that they maybe should have sold while it was in good shape...
Why is any wizard at all working?
I would assume the goblins can tell if money/gold is created magically and is therefore worthless. Also, it seems to be a situation similar to Star Trek where people work more for the sense of accomplishment than out of sheer necessity (since they presumably can create food, clothes and housing with magic).
since they presumably can create food, clothes and housing with magic
They actually can't create food using magic alone:
‘Your mother can’t produce food out of thin air,’ said Hermione. ‘No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp’s Law of Elemental Transfigur—’
‘Oh, speak English, can’t you?’ Ron said, prising a fishbone out from between his teeth.
‘It’s impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you’ve already got some –’
- Deathly Hallows, Chapter 15
From this, we can presume that food production is one aspect of wizarding society which can't be completely magicked away. The benefits of the division of labour suggests that farming is a wizarding occupation, unless they rely exclusively on trading with muggle farmers.
Why would I need money if I could create everything by magic?
Well, the characters in the books/movies need to buy brooms, wands and books for example. The first two are specialized magical artefacts that any wizard probably can't just create. The books contain specialized knowledge, but it's unclear why the pages can't just be copied. Maybe there's a magical copyright so trying would just create blank pages.
Ok, let me spin your idea a bit further:
How are books made? If by hand: this could also be done by magic then. Same goes for brooms.
The only Item that is not obtainable by magic would be knowledge. So I need money for getting knowledge. But why do people, who provide it, need money in the first place? What do they buy with it?
How are books made? If by hand: this could also be done by magic then. Same goes for brooms.
Creating things (magically or not) takes time and skill. There's a finite amount of time that can be spent on honing one's craft, so societal division of labour makes sense.
As a muggle, I could grow all my own food and sew all my own clothes, but I don't do that, and neither do most muggles.
I think it seems natural for specialization of skills to arise in wizarding society too.
Well, as for brooms and wands, it's stated that they consist out of rare materials like phoenix feathers.
Concerning books: At least for books on magic, there seem to be constant revisions of spellbooks, so probably the newest editions would be harder to come by. A lot of magic seems to be trial and error, as evidenced by the additions Snape did to his own potions handbook as a pupil.
It's weird he didn't share that knowledge when he was potions teacher though.
It's weird he didn't share that knowledge when he was potions teacher though.
I've always assumed that he did. Unlike Slughorn, Snape didn't teach out of the book, and always hand-wrote the potion instructions on the board. I assume that these instructions included his own additions and improvements that he had discovered over the years.
Probably because the standard textbook formulae are good enough to teach the curriculum to the students, and trying to teach something extra complex to a bunch of 14 year olds for a marginal object-level improvement isn't worth it. Presumably potions class doesn't teach you specific potions formulae, but rather teaches you the techniques and underlying concepts of potions so you can go to potions college with a firm grasp of the fundamentals.
I mean, we can tell that the things that people can make with magic are limited. Hence why the Weasleys live in a cramped house that seems to not fall over only because of magic while the Malfoys live in a mansion. So we end up with the same problem as the normal world - resources and skilled labor are limited, and therefore large groups of humans must figure out some way to distribute them.
Now, it seems like magic is a great productivity enhancer, hence why (to my knowledge) we never see a severely impoverished wizard who can't, for example, afford food or shelter. So the wizarding world appears to be, more or less, post scarcity, and any wizard who wants to live a simple life in the forest is presumably free to do so. But then, presumably, they also wouldn't much be part of the wizarding world in general and we would therefore never see them in the books.
But why wouldn't many wizards do this? Why is it never discussed as a serious possibility? Well for the same reason why very few people in the real world live in off-the-grid homesteads where the grow all their own food. Most people enjoy the luxuries of a society which works together. Yes, you can grow your own carrots in a garden, but it is much easier and more convenient to go somewhere and just pick them up off a shelf. But in order to enjoy this luxury which was created by others' labor, you must also contribute so that others may enjoy similar luxuries - ie, get a job.
Of course, some people really like growing their own carrots, and would be fine living on a homestead. But you run into a further problem, which is that very few other people want that. They want to enjoy a butter beer at the pub or to watch a quidditch match or to live in a house that isn't about to fall over except by magic. And since the amount of labor needed to enjoy such luxuries is very reasonable, and because everyone else in society is out enjoying these luxuries, almost everyone feels compelled to get a job so that they don't miss out and can have a robust and vibrant social circle.
This is my biggest gripe with Harry Potter apart from the anti-semitic stereotypes running all the banks. What the fuck is even the point of finding out you're actually a wizard who gets to go to a magical wizard school and have all kind of great adventures, when at the end of it all you still find out when you graduate you have to work a shitty bureaucracy job in an office doing wizard paperwork. Bitch if I'm a wizard I'm just fucking off to the woods and using magic to satisfy all my basic needs. Who needs a new iPhone when you can shoot fireballs and shit? It's like "Oh yeah there's magic and they can easily use it to produce a post-scarcity society but instead they just keep doing capitalism oh and by the way all the banks are run by these little goblin creatures with giant hook noses."
Capitalism. Someone has to make the money for the Malfoys to bribe the ministry.
What is the point in using abundant resources and productivity to make everyone get a decent life, when instead you can enslave "lower" creatures and create a wealth based hierarchy? This is Britain after all!
Because wizardry is like life in that universe, and while you personally could learn how to manufacture a cell phone, you'd still need significant resources, equipment, insider knowledge/private IP (Know the spell/incantation), and time. This parallels our world where it might be easier to enchant specific items you've specialized in to sell (crafting, maybe like a self warming tea cup) or work in magical remedies/restrictions/enforcement (service work) for currency which you can then use to purchase a wand than it would be to harvest the ingredients for your own wand and somehow know the enchantments and crafting techniques to create it. Also, wizards are magic, they are not all powerful.
Accio money