First, imagine all the ways a wizard could make effectively infinite amounts of muggle money. Arbitrage. Use a time turner and win at the stock market.
Neither of which are known to the Wizarding world, as evidenced by the Occlumency teacher’s reaction to his discovery of it. (and his discovery of it, and his discovery of it… :) )
Something doesn’t add up.
Your assessment of the Wizarding World’s evaluation of the Muggle world. To the supermajority of Wizards, science is a total unknown. Economic and sociopolitical theory are terms they’ve simply never heard of.
They are isolated and effectively are like the apocryphal Chinese Emperor who burned his fleets because there was nothing left to discover; or the equally apocryphal Patent Office official who wanted to close the Patent Office in the 1800′s because there was nothing left to invent.
So basically what you’re seeing is what’s called “hindsight bias”. It is obvious to you, who knows what “Muggles” have, that the Wizards are vastly disadvantaged here—insanely so—but remember that as further demonstrated by Draco’s total ignorance of Man’s visit to the Moon, Wizards believe Muggles are “wallowing in the mud”. The idea that they might LEARN from Muggles is actively suppressed by a concerted political campain by a powerful and long-standing major political faction.
Neither of which are known to the Wizarding world, as evidenced by the Occlumency teacher’s reaction to his discovery of it. (and his discovery of it, and his discovery of it… :) )
Your assessment of the Wizarding World’s evaluation of the Muggle world. To the supermajority of Wizards, science is a total unknown. Economic and sociopolitical theory are terms they’ve simply never heard of.
They are isolated and effectively are like the apocryphal Chinese Emperor who burned his fleets because there was nothing left to discover; or the equally apocryphal Patent Office official who wanted to close the Patent Office in the 1800′s because there was nothing left to invent.
So basically what you’re seeing is what’s called “hindsight bias”. It is obvious to you, who knows what “Muggles” have, that the Wizards are vastly disadvantaged here—insanely so—but remember that as further demonstrated by Draco’s total ignorance of Man’s visit to the Moon, Wizards believe Muggles are “wallowing in the mud”. The idea that they might LEARN from Muggles is actively suppressed by a concerted political campain by a powerful and long-standing major political faction.