Now that Harry’s invoked the debt and alerted all ex-death-eaters, I imagine it will remain useful only until they figure out a way to nullify or lessen its importance. Like change the law or whatever, I don’t know how they’d do it but I imagine they won’t sit idly. So perhaps he should cash in while he still can.
Highly unlikely: blood debts have probably been a significant political currency for a long time, and both due to institutional path-dependency and a lot of vested interests, I highly doubt that they’d change the importance of blood debts. Also: it seems like a lot of the justice system is built up around this concept. It would require a total overhaul of the justice system to deal with the blood debt. Otherwise they’d have to change the significance of being imperiuse’d which is also unlikely due to most of them otherwise being Azkaban(ne)d
How about a concerted campaign to persuade the public to lessen the importance of that particular debt? Remind everyone that Harry was a baby at the time and couldn’t have intended to defeat the Dark Lord, emphasise that it must have been some kind of freak accident, start spreading rumours with alternative explanations...
Anyway my point isn’t about any single thing they could do; the point is that there are a lot of powerful and politically-skilled people who would very much want to do something, and I don’t feel at all confident that we can assume they’ll be unable to come up with anything now that the gambit is no longer a surprise one.
You may very well be right. Due to free-riding and buck-passing I’d still expect a lot of them to do nothing.
Recall also that they’re all in internal power struggles over ink monopolies and what have you, plus Lucius lack of complete control has already been pointed out by Lucius.
For all those who think the blood debt will hurt their rivals more than themselves there’s good reason not to change the framing of the debt. Not to forget being the one to start this campaign will be both financially and politically costly. A beautiful collective action problem. Either way, we’ve too little insights into the political power balances to make qualified estimates about the “wall-paper’s” reaction.
Harry probably wont call in any blood debts himself, but any former deatheathers with substantial spare coin will jump at the possibility to get out from under a debt to Harry by giving Lucius money, so that 60.000 might well be paid in full before he makes it back to hogwarts, let alone sets any money making schemes in progress.
A possibility. Though for some of the lesser wealthy houses that is probably not the first option. For some a blood debt might also be a good way to join Harry’s side if he seems to start winning. For the opposite reason a lot might do nothing because they expect Lucius to crush him before he makes claim to his debts.
Free-riding and buck-passing are frequent solutions in the political game.
Now that Harry’s invoked the debt and alerted all ex-death-eaters, I imagine it will remain useful only until they figure out a way to nullify or lessen its importance. Like change the law or whatever, I don’t know how they’d do it but I imagine they won’t sit idly. So perhaps he should cash in while he still can.
Highly unlikely: blood debts have probably been a significant political currency for a long time, and both due to institutional path-dependency and a lot of vested interests, I highly doubt that they’d change the importance of blood debts. Also: it seems like a lot of the justice system is built up around this concept. It would require a total overhaul of the justice system to deal with the blood debt. Otherwise they’d have to change the significance of being imperiuse’d which is also unlikely due to most of them otherwise being Azkaban(ne)d
How about a concerted campaign to persuade the public to lessen the importance of that particular debt? Remind everyone that Harry was a baby at the time and couldn’t have intended to defeat the Dark Lord, emphasise that it must have been some kind of freak accident, start spreading rumours with alternative explanations...
Anyway my point isn’t about any single thing they could do; the point is that there are a lot of powerful and politically-skilled people who would very much want to do something, and I don’t feel at all confident that we can assume they’ll be unable to come up with anything now that the gambit is no longer a surprise one.
You may very well be right. Due to free-riding and buck-passing I’d still expect a lot of them to do nothing.
Recall also that they’re all in internal power struggles over ink monopolies and what have you, plus Lucius lack of complete control has already been pointed out by Lucius.
For all those who think the blood debt will hurt their rivals more than themselves there’s good reason not to change the framing of the debt. Not to forget being the one to start this campaign will be both financially and politically costly. A beautiful collective action problem. Either way, we’ve too little insights into the political power balances to make qualified estimates about the “wall-paper’s” reaction.
Harry probably wont call in any blood debts himself, but any former deatheathers with substantial spare coin will jump at the possibility to get out from under a debt to Harry by giving Lucius money, so that 60.000 might well be paid in full before he makes it back to hogwarts, let alone sets any money making schemes in progress.
A possibility. Though for some of the lesser wealthy houses that is probably not the first option. For some a blood debt might also be a good way to join Harry’s side if he seems to start winning. For the opposite reason a lot might do nothing because they expect Lucius to crush him before he makes claim to his debts.
Free-riding and buck-passing are frequent solutions in the political game.