I think that taking advantage of muggles in lots of ways is against the law, so imperiusing or memory charming a billionaire would be forbidden. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people have thought of and maybe tried using time turners to cheat the muggle lottery, so I’d give fair odds that’s illegal too. When it comes to arbitrage though, remember that while wizards in general may not be tremendously stupid, they tend to be incredibly clueless about the muggle world; remember that Arthur Weasley can pass as a premier expert on muggle artifacts. The fact that the values of gold and silver in the muggle world are totally divorced from their value in the wizarding world is likely to be very little known, and the concept of arbitrage may be completely foreign to them as well (look how primitive their whole financial system appears to be.)
The fact that Mr. Bester, Harry’s occlumency instructor, said he wished he could remember “That trick with the gold and silver” implies that a) the idea is not obvious to most wizards, and b) he thinks he would at least stand a chance of getting away with it.
I completely agree. Recall also Draco’s speech about muggles scratching in the dirt, and his reaction to Harry’s estimate of the lunar program budget. It’s not just wizards not paying attention to relative values of gold and silver in the muggle world—for the most part, the possibility that there could be a substantial amount of either in the muggle world doesn’t occur to them. Now you might expect muggleborns to know better, even after making allowances for the fact that they enter the wizarding world at age 11. On the other hand, if a muggleborn is clever enough to see the potential for profit, they might also be clever enough to see what Harry apparently does not—that calling attention to the fact that the muggles are ripe for exploitation is a Bad Idea.
I would actually suspect parents of a half blood (is there a name for this?) would be the weak link, rather than muggle-born children.
You’ve got people who have lived their whole lives as muggles, then suddenly they fall in love and get married and find out their spouse is a wizard. They’ve spent ~20 years in the muggle world and probably have a career of their own. No way they don’t ask their spouse to spend a couple hours and let them both live like kings for the rest of their lives. And if they don’t even get that much information about their other’s life, that’s some seriously messed up power dynamics in that household.
I’m thinking more “Go magic that banker and we’ll be rich.”
Or “Hey can you use that wicker spinmaster thingy to get us the lotto numbers?” I presume if the witch/wizard owned one they’d figure out what it does eventually. They’d have to after a long enough time living together.
Also, as Harry himself speculates, muggleborns, like his mother, probably tend to fall into the habit of not thinking of muggles as Real People anymore, because it’s too emotionally taxing, and they’re living in a different world. They may stop concerning themselves with the muggle world much by the time they’re grown up. The muggle raised wizards in the original canon certainly seemed to.
All good points, but I don’t think Harry is planning on “calling atttention to the fact that the muggles are ripe for exploitation”. He’s presumably planning to make the money without anyone except one or two adults he needs for transportation/permission/whatever knowing how he did it.
Oh, I’m sure taking advantage of muggles is treated even worse than taking advantage of pets. But there are a lot of rich people and a lot of ways to steal their money. Ditto with the lottery. Maybe they police the lottery, but do they police stock exchanges, leveraged currency trading, futures markets, prediction accounts, sports betting, Vegas, etc.? It takes ten minutes to think of a dozen ways to get effectively infinite muggle money with magic.
There’s no way to stop it all. Hence, the block (if it exists) has to be at the interface point. Somewhere in between when muggle money turns into galleons.
My guess is that rather than policing any of various muggle institutions, they investigate, as we do in our own world, whenever anyone appears to suddenly come into possession of large amounts of money for no clear reason, and if they find out they did something illegal, they throw them in jail.
Maybe people are already using wizardry to get huge amounts of money through the muggle world, but if so they may have to store and use the money very inconspicuously.
I wonder if they do. The wizarding world is a bizarre mix of modern and ancient traditions. It seems just as likely for them to have an income tax as not. So, they may or may not have the bureaucratic apparatus in place to know how much money people have and make.
I also wonder what the official stance would be on, say, bilking the stock market. It seems like standing up for muggle rights would be an unpopular political stance. Since there’s no direct victim and you’re doing things that aren’t even illegal in the muggle world (nevermind they don’t have time-travel), it seems unlikely the authorities would care to stop you, unless they have a blanket ban on anything that would result in inflation.
God, I’m such a double-nerd. There’s a dark lord to be fought and I’m hoping the next plot arc is about wizard tax law and how magical Britain handles inflation.
The funny thing is, it’s not really bilking the stock market. The whole argument for stock trading is that traders create value by accurately pricing securities, and thus allocating capital efficiently. Time travel is just a ridiculously efficient means of doing so. Given common access to Time-Turners, the stock market would literally be perfectly efficient(assuming that using turner-induced stock prices doesn’t violate the 6-hour rule). People without them would be very pissed off, but I’d actually argue it as being the right and proper way to run a stock market if the technology existed.
The only thing is, once you have enough time turners to control most of the volume of the market, there are no longer any linear-time causal inputs (read: people) deciding what directions the market will take. Market fluctuations would literally come from nowhere, though it might be best said that they would come from Time. And given Harry’s previous scary experiment (DO NOT MESS WITH TIME, ch. 17), I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to let Time be the one to control this.
I also wonder what the official stance would be on, say, bilking the stock market. It seems like standing up for muggle rights would be an unpopular political stance. Since there’s no direct victim
Bolded word is redundant. This is a service being provided and nobody is having wealth that they have ‘rights’ to taken away. This is different in nature to using using time travel or to win at cards or roulette.
The muggles end up better off than they were AND Harry is better off. Almost as though it is a trade.
This is by far the likeliest explanation I’ve seen. It does lead one to wonder how many wizards are sitting on huge piles of muggle money and slowly converting it into galleons as needed.
In canon there is a Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, but it’s not terribly competent.
However, the Minister of Magic also liaises with the Muggle Prime Minister; and presumably there is some exchange of information between their staffs. Any financial irregularities large enough to register on a national level could register that way.
In canon at least, it’s pretty clear that there is few interaction from Muggle Prime Minister and Minister of Magic, unless exceptional events occur. IIRC, in first 5 years, there is only two interactions : the Minister of Magic informing the Prime Minister about the escape of Sirius Black, and the dragons for the Triwizards Tournament. And there seems that not once did the Muggle Prime Minister directly contact the Minister of Magic, it only went the other way around.
So I’m sceptical about that. More likely the Ministry of Magic has someone working in the staff of the Muggle Prime Minister and informing the Ministry if something odds is happening.
My guess is that rather than policing any of various muggle institutions, they investigate, as we do in our own world, whenever anyone appears to suddenly come into possession of large amounts of money for no clear reason, and if they find out they did something illegal, they throw them in jail.
This would require a wizarding equivalent of the IRS, which I’ve never heard of. I’ve never seen mention of taxes, but they obviously have to pay the ministry employees something. One of the consequences of their primitive monetary system is that it is very easy to obtain money without the government knowing it. Perhaps they could use muggle taxes to buy gold to be minted into galleons, and pay employees that way. In cannon, the prime minister knows about the wizarding world, and it’s possible that information of it is just highly classified.
I suppose money could be magically tracked, but there would still need to be a ministry department. And if that is possible, it easily defeats most money-making strategies.
If any money tracking is going on, I suspect it’s done by the goblins, who I believe canonically have means of magically tracking things.
You don’t need to magically track money though, to keep record of how much money is in people’s bank accounts, and take notice if someone who’s not supposed to have lots of money suddenly starts making a lot of very expensive purchases.
You don’t need to magically track money though, to keep record of how much money is in people’s bank accounts, and take notice if someone who’s not supposed to have lots of money suddenly starts making a lot of very expensive purchases.
If you don’t put it in a bank account, then assuming no magical tracking, you could spend lots of money so long as you don’t reach a point where anyone starts asking “Hey, where did you get all this expensive stuff?”
Since the wizarding world has so much smaller a population than ours and seems to be quite class stratified, it’s quite conceivable that every person who’s supposed to be really wealthy is already known and identifiable, and any Joe Shmoe who tries making a thousand galleon purchase is instantly flagged as suspicious.
There’s another motivation for secrecy. Anyone who makes money off the Muggle world benefits from being the only one making money off the Muggle world. If they’re making lots of money, they don’t want other people to start thinking about how.
I think that taking advantage of muggles in lots of ways is against the law, so imperiusing or memory charming a billionaire would be forbidden. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if people have thought of and maybe tried using time turners to cheat the muggle lottery, so I’d give fair odds that’s illegal too. When it comes to arbitrage though, remember that while wizards in general may not be tremendously stupid, they tend to be incredibly clueless about the muggle world; remember that Arthur Weasley can pass as a premier expert on muggle artifacts. The fact that the values of gold and silver in the muggle world are totally divorced from their value in the wizarding world is likely to be very little known, and the concept of arbitrage may be completely foreign to them as well (look how primitive their whole financial system appears to be.)
The fact that Mr. Bester, Harry’s occlumency instructor, said he wished he could remember “That trick with the gold and silver” implies that a) the idea is not obvious to most wizards, and b) he thinks he would at least stand a chance of getting away with it.
I completely agree. Recall also Draco’s speech about muggles scratching in the dirt, and his reaction to Harry’s estimate of the lunar program budget. It’s not just wizards not paying attention to relative values of gold and silver in the muggle world—for the most part, the possibility that there could be a substantial amount of either in the muggle world doesn’t occur to them. Now you might expect muggleborns to know better, even after making allowances for the fact that they enter the wizarding world at age 11. On the other hand, if a muggleborn is clever enough to see the potential for profit, they might also be clever enough to see what Harry apparently does not—that calling attention to the fact that the muggles are ripe for exploitation is a Bad Idea.
I would actually suspect parents of a half blood (is there a name for this?) would be the weak link, rather than muggle-born children.
You’ve got people who have lived their whole lives as muggles, then suddenly they fall in love and get married and find out their spouse is a wizard. They’ve spent ~20 years in the muggle world and probably have a career of their own. No way they don’t ask their spouse to spend a couple hours and let them both live like kings for the rest of their lives. And if they don’t even get that much information about their other’s life, that’s some seriously messed up power dynamics in that household.
Pop quiz: What percentage of Muggles have ever heard the word “arbitrage”?
(Retracted because reply makes sense)
I’m thinking more “Go magic that banker and we’ll be rich.”
Or “Hey can you use that wicker spinmaster thingy to get us the lotto numbers?” I presume if the witch/wizard owned one they’d figure out what it does eventually. They’d have to after a long enough time living together.
Also, as Harry himself speculates, muggleborns, like his mother, probably tend to fall into the habit of not thinking of muggles as Real People anymore, because it’s too emotionally taxing, and they’re living in a different world. They may stop concerning themselves with the muggle world much by the time they’re grown up. The muggle raised wizards in the original canon certainly seemed to.
All good points, but I don’t think Harry is planning on “calling atttention to the fact that the muggles are ripe for exploitation”. He’s presumably planning to make the money without anyone except one or two adults he needs for transportation/permission/whatever knowing how he did it.
Oh, I’m sure taking advantage of muggles is treated even worse than taking advantage of pets. But there are a lot of rich people and a lot of ways to steal their money. Ditto with the lottery. Maybe they police the lottery, but do they police stock exchanges, leveraged currency trading, futures markets, prediction accounts, sports betting, Vegas, etc.? It takes ten minutes to think of a dozen ways to get effectively infinite muggle money with magic.
There’s no way to stop it all. Hence, the block (if it exists) has to be at the interface point. Somewhere in between when muggle money turns into galleons.
My guess is that rather than policing any of various muggle institutions, they investigate, as we do in our own world, whenever anyone appears to suddenly come into possession of large amounts of money for no clear reason, and if they find out they did something illegal, they throw them in jail.
Maybe people are already using wizardry to get huge amounts of money through the muggle world, but if so they may have to store and use the money very inconspicuously.
I wonder if they do. The wizarding world is a bizarre mix of modern and ancient traditions. It seems just as likely for them to have an income tax as not. So, they may or may not have the bureaucratic apparatus in place to know how much money people have and make.
I also wonder what the official stance would be on, say, bilking the stock market. It seems like standing up for muggle rights would be an unpopular political stance. Since there’s no direct victim and you’re doing things that aren’t even illegal in the muggle world (nevermind they don’t have time-travel), it seems unlikely the authorities would care to stop you, unless they have a blanket ban on anything that would result in inflation.
God, I’m such a double-nerd. There’s a dark lord to be fought and I’m hoping the next plot arc is about wizard tax law and how magical Britain handles inflation.
The funny thing is, it’s not really bilking the stock market. The whole argument for stock trading is that traders create value by accurately pricing securities, and thus allocating capital efficiently. Time travel is just a ridiculously efficient means of doing so. Given common access to Time-Turners, the stock market would literally be perfectly efficient(assuming that using turner-induced stock prices doesn’t violate the 6-hour rule). People without them would be very pissed off, but I’d actually argue it as being the right and proper way to run a stock market if the technology existed.
The only thing is, once you have enough time turners to control most of the volume of the market, there are no longer any linear-time causal inputs (read: people) deciding what directions the market will take. Market fluctuations would literally come from nowhere, though it might be best said that they would come from Time. And given Harry’s previous scary experiment (DO NOT MESS WITH TIME, ch. 17), I’m not sure it’s such a good idea to let Time be the one to control this.
Bolded word is redundant. This is a service being provided and nobody is having wealth that they have ‘rights’ to taken away. This is different in nature to using using time travel or to win at cards or roulette.
The muggles end up better off than they were AND Harry is better off. Almost as though it is a trade.
(Essentially I just agree with Alsadius.)
This is by far the likeliest explanation I’ve seen. It does lead one to wonder how many wizards are sitting on huge piles of muggle money and slowly converting it into galleons as needed.
In canon there is a Misuse of Muggle Artifacts office, but it’s not terribly competent.
However, the Minister of Magic also liaises with the Muggle Prime Minister; and presumably there is some exchange of information between their staffs. Any financial irregularities large enough to register on a national level could register that way.
In canon at least, it’s pretty clear that there is few interaction from Muggle Prime Minister and Minister of Magic, unless exceptional events occur. IIRC, in first 5 years, there is only two interactions : the Minister of Magic informing the Prime Minister about the escape of Sirius Black, and the dragons for the Triwizards Tournament. And there seems that not once did the Muggle Prime Minister directly contact the Minister of Magic, it only went the other way around.
So I’m sceptical about that. More likely the Ministry of Magic has someone working in the staff of the Muggle Prime Minister and informing the Ministry if something odds is happening.
This would require a wizarding equivalent of the IRS, which I’ve never heard of. I’ve never seen mention of taxes, but they obviously have to pay the ministry employees something. One of the consequences of their primitive monetary system is that it is very easy to obtain money without the government knowing it. Perhaps they could use muggle taxes to buy gold to be minted into galleons, and pay employees that way. In cannon, the prime minister knows about the wizarding world, and it’s possible that information of it is just highly classified.
I suppose money could be magically tracked, but there would still need to be a ministry department. And if that is possible, it easily defeats most money-making strategies.
If any money tracking is going on, I suspect it’s done by the goblins, who I believe canonically have means of magically tracking things.
You don’t need to magically track money though, to keep record of how much money is in people’s bank accounts, and take notice if someone who’s not supposed to have lots of money suddenly starts making a lot of very expensive purchases.
That’s assuming you put it in a bank account.
If you don’t put it in a bank account, then assuming no magical tracking, you could spend lots of money so long as you don’t reach a point where anyone starts asking “Hey, where did you get all this expensive stuff?”
Since the wizarding world has so much smaller a population than ours and seems to be quite class stratified, it’s quite conceivable that every person who’s supposed to be really wealthy is already known and identifiable, and any Joe Shmoe who tries making a thousand galleon purchase is instantly flagged as suspicious.
There’s another motivation for secrecy. Anyone who makes money off the Muggle world benefits from being the only one making money off the Muggle world. If they’re making lots of money, they don’t want other people to start thinking about how.