Simplest; The goblins, and wizard society just do not approve of outright theft, even from muggles, and there are magics that will reliably mark stolen goods. So if you want to come up with gold by the tonne, you need to either actually engage muggles in trade (eewww) or go hunting for treasure with no (living) owners.
More amusingly: I am not at all sure competent wizards have much need to care about coin at all. Lucius is a political creature, so he needs ways to bribe idiots, but a wizard that keeps their newt skills up to scratch is pretty much carrying around a cornucopia machine in their pocket. Sure, you could spend a bunch of effort and rob a bank, then use that gold to have a house built.. Or, you know, save yourself the hassle and raise a cute little tower from the bones of the earth/bend space and live like a king in a post office box.. ect.
Simplest; The goblins, and wizard society just do not approve of outright theft, even from muggles, and there are magics that will reliably mark stolen goods.
That is the first suggestion that would actually work. It’s just that I can’t believe that the average wizard thinks of muggles as persons (or humans) that can be stolen from. It’s less plausible than that they would care about the stability of the economy.
Besides, what magic can create, magic can destroy. People would invest serious effort in developing magic that would erase the “magical signature” of stolen gold if it would help them become billionaires.
More amusingly: I am not at all sure competent wizards have much need to care about coin at all.
The reason bribing people with money works in the first place, is that most people don’t have as much money as they would like. If wizards didn’t really need money, as you suggest, then they wouldn’t care about it and couldn’t be bribed.
Since money translates into power over others, Lucius too would always want more money.
It’s just that I can’t believe that the average wizard thinks of muggles as persons (or humans) that can be stolen from.
I don’t know. They have a fairly insular view of the world, but putting them on a par with animals seems to be a fringe notion, albeit one popular with those in power (ie purebloods.)
The reason bribing people with money works in the first place, is that most people don’t have as much money as they would like. If wizards didn’t really need money, as you suggest, then they wouldn’t care about it and couldn’t be bribed.
Magical goods can be sold for money, and therefore are. You want a new broomstick? Pay up, bucko.
(Also, food is hard to create magically, according to canon, although God only knows how that works.)
“Right? You’re Muggles,” said the boy. He smiled twistedly. “You have as much standing in the magical British legal system as mice. No wizard is going to care about any arguments you make about rights, about fairness, they won’t even take the time to listen. You don’t have any power, see, so they don’t have to bother.”
Admittedly he was overstating it to make a point, but it’s still mostly true.
Perhaps wizards are superstitious and believe that stolen gold is cursed (or perhaps it actually is.) It’s a bit of a ridiculous explanation, but it’s not implausible that wizards would be easily susceptible to superstition or weird curses. And there are plenty of benefits of either spreading the rumor or creating actual curses, since they don’t like theft either. That it benefits muggles is just an accident, not their intention.
Are there notable instances of wizards stealing gold (or other precious objects) from other wizards and/or muggles? If there are, are any of them every cursed due to the inherent act of theft?
Nothing for gold that I recall, but Mundungus Fletcher stole a bunch of heirloom silverware and other such valuable things from Grimmauld place after Sirius died, and possibly even while he was alive, and didn’t seem to be particularly cursed, just throttled by Harry for disrespect to Sirius’s memory.
On the other hand with Sirius’s attitude towards his relatives he could easily have made a statement declaring his disinterest in his heritage that intentionally or unintentionally revoked his ownership over such items.
Fletcher is portrayed as a sketchy thief/fence pretty much from book 1, IIRC. It’s hard to imagine that so many people could have intentionally or not abandoned their magical ownership as to make such a career feasible.
He refers to cauldrons that “fell off the back of a broomstick”. Perhaps he meant it literally?
But no, he tells an amusing story about stealing toads from a fellow thief and selling them back to him. It’s clear that their relationship is built on selling each other things they “nicked”.
“Simplest; The goblins, and wizard society just do not approve of outright theft, even from muggles, and there are magics that will reliably mark stolen goods”
This makes a lot of sense. In a society where theft from even most wizards should be theoretically pretty easy, blanket ‘anti-theft’ measures seem most workable. Which, of course, implies that ownership is an intrinsic property of matter in the wizarding verse. Ayn Rand would squee.
Alternative; HPMOR is a sometimes a sideways critique of the Rowling universe, and should, perhaps, sometimes be viewed in that light.
Rowling’s universe does have poor wizards, and it does have money and currency constraints. Gold seems to be both intrinsically valuable and rare which is strange. There do seem to be strong cultural taboos against interaction with muggles, despite the obvious benefits (gold, sex, etc.) But the origin of those taboos have never been adequately explained. Such an explanation might allow for a Voldemort who was guided by something other than a quest for personal power, but who was some matrix-esque control mechanism from Atlantis. But I don’t want to get too Deus Ex Maquina in my explanations if something better presents itself. In any case, the taboos could easily be outdated. The existence of long-lived wizards suggests a larger ratio of old people to young, and a more conservative society (as in ‘resistant to change’) in general.
Alternately perhaps Harry’s experiment regarding inheritance was wrong or inadequate in some way and magic really can be diluted by interacting/breeding with muggles. We’ve been told that the most powerful wizards tend to have few children. Grindelwald seems to have been Gay. Dumbledore is both Gay and childless/asexual in his adult life. If we assume a given number of Atlantean ‘magic markers’ (genetic markers which confer magic ability, which is what a strict Mendelian wizarding gene is likely to be ;-) ) then perhaps having a larger number of a particular marker in a population really WOULD decrease the average power of anyone else who held one of those markers. This would allow for the cultural evolution of a wizarding world that was strongly insular, since familiarity breeds children and indiscriminate genetic dispersal would lead to collapse or diminishment of that family’s wizarding powers.
Which suggests that either Neville has a lot of distant relatives somewhere, or remarkable magical potential.
Well, in canon you need to pay for food—although it’s mentioned that you can cast enlarging charms o food you already have. Aaand … that’s kinda it. Water, free. Shelter free. Furniture, free.. Transport, free. Magical artifacts, to be fair, will cost you somewhat, so entertainment, medicine (is it mentioned if St. Mungos is public healthcare?), and certain conveniences (owls, broomsticks, floo powder …) will require a least intermittent income, but I would say an unemployed wizard is still quite comfortable compared to a muggle. And most magic items will last for years or decades, judging by the Weasleys.
Simplest; The goblins, and wizard society just do not approve of outright theft, even from muggles, and there are magics that will reliably mark stolen goods. So if you want to come up with gold by the tonne, you need to either actually engage muggles in trade (eewww) or go hunting for treasure with no (living) owners.
More amusingly: I am not at all sure competent wizards have much need to care about coin at all. Lucius is a political creature, so he needs ways to bribe idiots, but a wizard that keeps their newt skills up to scratch is pretty much carrying around a cornucopia machine in their pocket. Sure, you could spend a bunch of effort and rob a bank, then use that gold to have a house built.. Or, you know, save yourself the hassle and raise a cute little tower from the bones of the earth/bend space and live like a king in a post office box.. ect.
That is the first suggestion that would actually work. It’s just that I can’t believe that the average wizard thinks of muggles as persons (or humans) that can be stolen from. It’s less plausible than that they would care about the stability of the economy.
Besides, what magic can create, magic can destroy. People would invest serious effort in developing magic that would erase the “magical signature” of stolen gold if it would help them become billionaires.
The reason bribing people with money works in the first place, is that most people don’t have as much money as they would like. If wizards didn’t really need money, as you suggest, then they wouldn’t care about it and couldn’t be bribed.
Since money translates into power over others, Lucius too would always want more money.
I don’t know. They have a fairly insular view of the world, but putting them on a par with animals seems to be a fringe notion, albeit one popular with those in power (ie purebloods.)
Magical goods can be sold for money, and therefore are. You want a new broomstick? Pay up, bucko.
(Also, food is hard to create magically, according to canon, although God only knows how that works.)
Admittedly he was overstating it to make a point, but it’s still mostly true.
Perhaps wizards are superstitious and believe that stolen gold is cursed (or perhaps it actually is.) It’s a bit of a ridiculous explanation, but it’s not implausible that wizards would be easily susceptible to superstition or weird curses. And there are plenty of benefits of either spreading the rumor or creating actual curses, since they don’t like theft either. That it benefits muggles is just an accident, not their intention.
Are there notable instances of wizards stealing gold (or other precious objects) from other wizards and/or muggles? If there are, are any of them every cursed due to the inherent act of theft?
Nothing for gold that I recall, but Mundungus Fletcher stole a bunch of heirloom silverware and other such valuable things from Grimmauld place after Sirius died, and possibly even while he was alive, and didn’t seem to be particularly cursed, just throttled by Harry for disrespect to Sirius’s memory.
On the other hand with Sirius’s attitude towards his relatives he could easily have made a statement declaring his disinterest in his heritage that intentionally or unintentionally revoked his ownership over such items.
Fletcher is portrayed as a sketchy thief/fence pretty much from book 1, IIRC. It’s hard to imagine that so many people could have intentionally or not abandoned their magical ownership as to make such a career feasible.
He refers to cauldrons that “fell off the back of a broomstick”. Perhaps he meant it literally?
But no, he tells an amusing story about stealing toads from a fellow thief and selling them back to him. It’s clear that their relationship is built on selling each other things they “nicked”.
You mean, aside from Bacon’s diary?
“Simplest; The goblins, and wizard society just do not approve of outright theft, even from muggles, and there are magics that will reliably mark stolen goods”
This makes a lot of sense. In a society where theft from even most wizards should be theoretically pretty easy, blanket ‘anti-theft’ measures seem most workable. Which, of course, implies that ownership is an intrinsic property of matter in the wizarding verse. Ayn Rand would squee.
Alternative; HPMOR is a sometimes a sideways critique of the Rowling universe, and should, perhaps, sometimes be viewed in that light.
Rowling’s universe does have poor wizards, and it does have money and currency constraints. Gold seems to be both intrinsically valuable and rare which is strange. There do seem to be strong cultural taboos against interaction with muggles, despite the obvious benefits (gold, sex, etc.) But the origin of those taboos have never been adequately explained. Such an explanation might allow for a Voldemort who was guided by something other than a quest for personal power, but who was some matrix-esque control mechanism from Atlantis. But I don’t want to get too Deus Ex Maquina in my explanations if something better presents itself. In any case, the taboos could easily be outdated. The existence of long-lived wizards suggests a larger ratio of old people to young, and a more conservative society (as in ‘resistant to change’) in general.
Alternately perhaps Harry’s experiment regarding inheritance was wrong or inadequate in some way and magic really can be diluted by interacting/breeding with muggles. We’ve been told that the most powerful wizards tend to have few children. Grindelwald seems to have been Gay. Dumbledore is both Gay and childless/asexual in his adult life. If we assume a given number of Atlantean ‘magic markers’ (genetic markers which confer magic ability, which is what a strict Mendelian wizarding gene is likely to be ;-) ) then perhaps having a larger number of a particular marker in a population really WOULD decrease the average power of anyone else who held one of those markers. This would allow for the cultural evolution of a wizarding world that was strongly insular, since familiarity breeds children and indiscriminate genetic dispersal would lead to collapse or diminishment of that family’s wizarding powers.
Which suggests that either Neville has a lot of distant relatives somewhere, or remarkable magical potential.
I think that most people can’t do that.
Well, in canon you need to pay for food—although it’s mentioned that you can cast enlarging charms o food you already have. Aaand … that’s kinda it. Water, free. Shelter free. Furniture, free.. Transport, free. Magical artifacts, to be fair, will cost you somewhat, so entertainment, medicine (is it mentioned if St. Mungos is public healthcare?), and certain conveniences (owls, broomsticks, floo powder …) will require a least intermittent income, but I would say an unemployed wizard is still quite comfortable compared to a muggle. And most magic items will last for years or decades, judging by the Weasleys.