But which is “real” and which is “fake”? “Real” and “fake” are not objective properties of things. If only goblins can tell the two golds apart, why would anyone care? For practical purposes, for everyone else except Harry Potter there would just be “gold the goblins for unknown reasons say is type 1” and “gold the goblins for unknown reasons say is type 2″. Harry would be trying to find out what objective properties distinguish them.
The goblins are the central bankers of the wizarding world. They are entrusted with providing a reasonable money supply, and they’re free to use methods of their choice to create that(well, subject to assorted speciesist laws). I don’t care why the Federal Reserve says to use cotton money instead of plastic, as long as they run the money supply sufficiently well that I trust them.
But which is “real” and which is “fake”? “Real” and “fake” are not objective properties of things. If only goblins can tell the two golds apart, why would anyone care? For practical purposes, for everyone else except Harry Potter there would just be “gold the goblins for unknown reasons say is type 1” and “gold the goblins for unknown reasons say is type 2″. Harry would be trying to find out what objective properties distinguish them.
Fake in the sense that Goblins claim that gallons are made from raw gold, when they actually aren’t.
The goblins are the central bankers of the wizarding world. They are entrusted with providing a reasonable money supply, and they’re free to use methods of their choice to create that(well, subject to assorted speciesist laws). I don’t care why the Federal Reserve says to use cotton money instead of plastic, as long as they run the money supply sufficiently well that I trust them.