Your Letter

[Jamie Roberts]

People talk a lot of shit about Yudkowsky's writing, and rightly so, but you've got to hand it to the guy for putting in the thought to make this type of weird shit Rowling threw out on the fly make some sort of internal sense. "Transfiguration is non-permanent! That should close more plot holes than it opens!"

Cause like, fuck, what do you mean I can't summon food, Rowling? How is food defined? Dead organic matter? Can I magic up a brick of salt then? Is food anything a human can digest, and we're just retconing stuff like the pig? Then can I feed a goat nothing but magically created grass, and then eat the goat? Is food defined as something anything can digest? Do microorganisms count? Is it impossible to summon rocks because of this? Damn it Rowling, I want answers! You've raised so many damn questions!



Although Yudkowsky did have an ulterior motive in his solution, in that if it was possible for the protagonist he'd written to just spend all day every day transforming small stones into giant cubes of Lithium or whatever, we all know that his protagonist would have absolutely done that. As a writer myself, I too understand the need to shut that shit down in advance.

 

[RyubosJ]

if anyone can think of civil war equivalents to compare it to go ahead please,

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iT reminds me of the 1910 Mexican Revolution and Francisco I. Madero. After winning the war he alienated much of his left win support. Of course he also didn't survive the counter revolutionary coup, so not a perfect example.

 

[andrewopk]

Interwar Germany, SPD allying with monarchists/nationalists/conservatives against various communist/socialist groups

 

[Nyvis]

Waving a wand is still labour!

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Yeah but you could argue the wand is your means of production, which makes a lot of wizards who can do their job with it as their main tool petit bourgeois, which has consequences for class politics.

A lot of stuff in the wizarding world can probably be solved by ensuring everyone has access to a wand and education as well as removing regulations that prevent them from solving their problems with those tools in a way you can't answer working class woes.

On the other hand, there's land/housing/rent to consider so actually, it might be more akin to the peasant condition that the craftsman condition. A wand, a plot of land and the public education to know how to use magic to turn it into food and shelter and you could have most wizards solving their own needs.

I mean they seem to be able to replicate food, clean, and do rudimentary healthcare and more! Wouldn't that generate a massive surplus of productivity for magic users such that they can afford to spend most of their time doing whatever they want? With magic being able to stand in for a global supply chain, are individual wizards not capable of existing in something akin to autarky?
Wouldn't that massively distort the economic calculus?

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I think just like modern capitalism, scarcity is likely to be enforced through copious use of intellectual property laws and anti duplicating methods for goods that are more information than labour.

Reminder, one of the businesses we see in a recurring way in the books is a bookstore. But wizards can probably wave their wands and duplicate non enchanted books. So I assume magic books are chock full of wizard DRMs.

In fact a big underground activity could just be distributing unenchanted books for free so that people can keep improving on their magic without having to spend on expensive manuals.

Similarly, wizards could just wave their hand and make an area of land disappear from muggle view, which would let them ignore zoning laws and building permits, then build a house with magic. I assume this is illegal in order to protect rich wizards' right to extract rent from tenants, though.

There's also ingredients to consider. Magical creatures and plants are likely to require quite a bit of magical labour to produce and be resistant to effortless duplication so I think that's one domain where labour costs would genuinely factor in.

People talk a lot of shit about Yudkowsky's writing, and rightly so, but you've got to hand it to the guy for putting in the thought to make this type of weird shit Rowling threw out on the fly make some sort of internal sense. "Transfiguration is non-permanent! That should close more plot holes than it opens!"

Cause like, fuck, what do you mean I can't summon food, Rowling? How is food defined? Dead organic matter? Can I magic up a brick of salt then? Is food anything a human can digest, and we're just retconing stuff like the pig? Then can I feed a goat nothing but magically created grass, and then eat the goat? Is food defined as something anything can digest? Do microorganisms count? Is it impossible to summon rocks because of this? Damn it Rowling, I want answers! You've raised so many damn questions!



Although Yudkowsky did have an ulterior motive in his solution, in that if it was possible for the protagonist he'd written to just spend all day every day transforming small stones into giant cubes of Lithium or whatever, we all know that his protagonist would have absolutely done that. As a writer myself, I too understand the need to shut that shit down in advance.

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Canon has magic use to supercharge vegetable growth though so it's likely it still facilitates food production massively. But you need a patch of land for that.

 

[Acolyte]

I dunno if land is all that valuable for a wizard. They can easily expand the inside of suitcase to house an entire zoo. They could easily build fully self contained archoligies with stuff we know they have.

They could genuinely live inside a boot and nothing could stop them.

 

[illhousen]

A nice reflection on the legacy of the series and a well-deserved fuck-you to Rowling.

I honestly wouldn't mind reading a full story detailing the political landscape of magical Britain, but I understand why this story ultimately works better as a oneshot.

Like, when you first sit down in the Great Hall and food just appears in front of you, at that age, you don't know about Gamp's Law, you don't know there's a kitchen full of slaves under your feet.

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Lol, it will never not boggle my mind how it's even a thing. It was such an easily avoidable direction.

I mean, the second book is not, like, great at dealing with the portrayal of an oppressed minority (Dobby is a pathetic figure who talks funny, does more harm than good in his attempts to help, and needs Great Harry Potter to save him in the end), but at least the moral is clear: slavery is bad, kids, don't do a slavery. Malfoys are bad for keeping a slave, Harry is good for freeing the slave, the former slave is happy to be free. It's about as clear-cut as you can physically get.

And then the fourth book arrives and, actually, no, house elves want to be slaves, they're happy with serving wizards, it's just bad masters who are the problem. Also, Dobby is a weirdo for wanting to be paid for his work, and even he refuses to be paid too much.

With other questionable stuff like the happy ending restoring the status quo that was shown to be pretty bad even without Voldemort or the portrayal of goblins and so on I can at least understand how it came about (a combination of priviledge and unexamined biases, mostly). With slavery, though, I mean, why even go that way? That way lies nothing good.

 

[Maugan Ra]

I mean you can absolutely write the House Elves not liking money without making them slaves, which is the truly wild thing. Off the top of my head it could be some kind of pact between their... house/tribe/gathering whatever - and Hogwarts, where they provide food and cleaning and the wizards of Hogwarts protect and conceal their nesting grounds. Or maybe their natural magical capabilities means they never really developed currency in the same way as humans, and still operate on a barter system or something.

But nope, they're slaves. Straight up, can be freed from their bondage and everything but also don't want to be?

 

[illhousen]

I mean you can absolutely write the House Elves not liking money without making them slaves, which is the truly wild thing. Off the top of my head it could be some kind of pact between their... house/tribe/gathering whatever - and Hogwarts, where they provide food and cleaning and the wizards of Hogwarts protect and conceal their nesting grounds. Or maybe their natural magical capabilities means they never really developed currency in the same way as humans, and still operate on a barter system or something.

But nope, they're slaves. Straight up, can be freed from their bondage and everything but also don't want to be?

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Certainly.

You could, as just one example, lean more into fae myths and make it so house elves value money and other material goods little but have their own odd needs, like providing them with a new song to sing each year or something. Malfoys can still be bad for trapping Dobby in a contract he doesn't like but can't break, and Dumbledore can be good for respecting them and coming to an arrangement that works for everyone.

Instead we have what we have, and I don't know why.

 

[10ebbor10]

With slavery, though, I mean, why even go that way? That way lies nothing good.

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Maybe Rowling wanted to mock what she considered to be moral busybodies using Hermione as a stand in?

 

[Aussiehawker]

Interwar Germany, SPD allying with monarchists/nationalists/conservatives against various communist/socialist groups

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... Because they kicked off a violent revolution, as the SPD was making Germany into a republic and passing various social and working rights reforms? Tarring the German Left. And then the Communists screwed them over, and let the Nazis take over, by refusing to work with the 'Social Fascists', against the actual fascists, and sometimes actively working with the Nazis to hurt the SPD. The bad guy were absolutely the KPD, not the SPD. Red-Brown isn't just a meme.


Anyway, it's the same old critiques of Harry Potter. People have been making the same points about House elf slavery, blatant stereotypes, or feckless writing for ages. Rowling is good at some parts of writing but is very lazy and thoughtless about world-building, and actively spiteful in some regards (like deliberately writing quidditch as dumb). Anyway, You think real radicals would actually go and share the wonders of magic with the Muggle world, instead of becoming a bunch of useless activists.

I always find it ridiculous when people harp on about poverty in the Wizarding world. Wizards can do far too much with their wands to ever be actually poor with the slightest effort. They can teleport, as their equivalent to a driving test. Our best example of poverty is the Weasley's a single income household, with a ton of well fed children, in a large country house, with lots of magical gadgets and Muggle stuff for Arthur to tinker with. Who is in a plain reading of the text of the earlier books (some headcanons are different of course), incompetent at his job as a Muggle expert. Basically, the only reason they are finally pressured is putting a bunch of children through school, who have to buy explicitly magic goods and services and Molly not working, despite being rid of the children most of the year. They are never going to starve as long as they have their wands, no one seems like they are going to take their house, housework is literally flicking of wands if you don't do permanent charms or elves, transportation costs are nil if you just Apparate instead of flooing or brooming. Only by wizarding standards are the Weasley's poor. Hell, when they got a windfall of money, they didn't have to spend it all paying down debts, they just went on an extended holiday to a foreign country.

If you are unethical, you can prey upon Muggles, with almost zero chance of getting caught if you aren't an idiot. And if you are ethical, you could easily make money doing stuff for them, without even revealing magic.

 

[andrewopk]

What about, say, Hagrid, who only had employment as a gameskeep as a favor from a friend, and was not legally allowed to use magic? What about Lupin, who had to hide his medical condition to avoid discrimination and having trouble holding down a job to do so?
Arthur Weasly is able to like,,, do his friends favors for box seats to the World Cup

 

[Aussiehawker]

What about, say, Hagrid, who only had employment as a gameskeep as a favor from a friend, and was not legally allowed to use magic? What about Lupin, who had to hide his medical condition to avoid discrimination and having trouble holding down a job to do so?
Arthur Weasly is able to like,,, do his friends favors for box seats to the World Cup

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I did say if they could use their wand. Thought it is kinda mean that nobody spared Hagrid like an hour of their time to enlarge his shack, or just let him turn one of the million spare classrooms of Hogwarts into a bedroom. Anyway, even without magic, he is freakishly strong and tough, and he does still use it occasionally when he isn't supposed too. And for most of the books, he was exonerated, but never felt the need to get his education.



And Lupin could do literally a million things to make money. He is explicitly not just a run of the mill wizard, but a talented one. It's explicit in the text that Muggle money is convertible to Wizard money, and even if it isn't, some goods could transfer over, or he could just eat Muggle Food, and wear Muggle Clothing. He could repair stuff for Muggles with his wand. He could do courier stuff with Apparation. It doesn't even have to be illegal like drugs, there are higher-end ones for legal documents, or small, high-value items. A Wizard with okay potions training and some okay wand work could be an amazing back-alley doctor. If you have very good potions training, you could model or sex work, or act with Polyjuice, or other appearance changing magic. He could help Muggle companies find resources. Or go shipwreck diving or treasure hunting. A wizard could play the stock market with all manner of methods, from divination to potions, to legilimency. Or he could just get hired as a Consultant with a mind trick, and do about as much work as they normally do, in some massive corporation, or government.

Even in the magical world. Do Goblins care about wizard prejudices? And there are lots of other magical countries, I'm sure some don't care.

A Wizard really doesn't need the rest of the Wizard world, except for goods or services he isn't willing to make himself. Which requires far less training to do, unlike becoming autarkic as a Muggle. Which lots of people pull off fine anyway. Lupin is burdened more than others by requiring a potion every full moon, but he could always buy a shack on an island in the Atlantic and teleport there every full moon, with some sheep to sate the beast.

 

[10ebbor10]

Anyway, You think real radicals would actually go and share the wonders of magic with the Muggle world, instead of becoming a bunch of useless activists.

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The story itself provides an easy explanation.

Certainly not the DA comrades he put in Azkaban."

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Consider. Even during the darkest days of Voldemort's reign, when his supporters were casually torturing people to death in their living rooms, the masquerade held. The ministry, ineffective as it was at stopping Voldemort, was apparently super-effective at covering stuff, and Voldemort was seemingly perfectly fine with maintaining the cover. We also know that international wizard leagues and organisations have (at times) massively reduced the population of certain extremely dangerous dragons to diminish the chance of muggles finding out.

Whatever else happens in the Harry Potter, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is maintaining this misquerade. Sharing wonders of magic with the muggle world seems like an easy way to punch your ticket to Azkaban.

 

[Talia B]

Lol, it will never not boggle my mind how it's even a thing. It was such an easily avoidable direction.

I mean, the second book is not, like, great at dealing with the portrayal of an oppressed minority (Dobby is a pathetic figure who talks funny, does more harm than good in his attempts to help, and needs Great Harry Potter to save him in the end), but at least the moral is clear: slavery is bad, kids, don't do a slavery. Malfoys are bad for keeping a slave, Harry is good for freeing the slave, the former slave is happy to be free. It's about as clear-cut as you can physically get.

And then the fourth book arrives and, actually, no, house elves want to be slaves, they're happy with serving wizards, it's just bad masters who are the problem. Also, Dobby is a weirdo for wanting to be paid for his work, and even he refuses to be paid too much.

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It would have been so easy to say they were paid, or that cooking in the kitchens was a prestigious position for elves to aspire to. To make them high-class valets, chambermaids, butlers. Or to make it part of a contract with the Faerie, with esoteric and ritual payment in fresh milk and magical favors.

So fucking easy.

And she didn't fuckin' do it. She doubled down on slavery apologia.

Fucking Rowling.

 

[Nyvis]

I dunno if land is all that valuable for a wizard. They can easily expand the inside of suitcase to house an entire zoo. They could easily build fully self contained archoligies with stuff we know they have.

They could genuinely live inside a boot and nothing could stop them.

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Do we ever see them growing plants that way though? They'd need artificial sunlight I guess, which seems doable.

And Lupin could do literally a million things to make money. He is explicitly not just a run of the mill wizard, but a talented one. It's explicit in the text that Muggle money is convertible to Wizard money, and even if it isn't, some goods could transfer over, or he could just eat Muggle Food, and wear Muggle Clothing. He could repair stuff for Muggles with his wand. He could do courier stuff with Apparation. It doesn't even have to be illegal like drugs, there are higher-end ones for legal documents, or small, high-value items. A Wizard with okay potions training and some okay wand work could be an amazing back-alley doctor. If you have very good potions training, you could model or sex work, or act with Polyjuice, or other appearance changing magic. He could help Muggle companies find resources. Or go shipwreck diving or treasure hunting. A wizard could play the stock market with all manner of methods, from divination to potions, to legilimency. Or he could just get hired as a Consultant with a mind trick, and do about as much work as they normally do, in some massive corporation, or government.

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I'm confident the ministry enforces the statute on people trying to do so, especially if they're werewolves. And he's more likely to be "killed resisting arrest" than get the slap on the wrist a wizards without his illness would get considering the views on lycanthropy.

The story itself provides an easy explanation.



Consider. Even during the darkest days of Voldemort's reign, when his supporters were casually torturing people to death in their living rooms, the masquerade held. The ministry, ineffective as it was at stopping Voldemort, was apparently super-effective at covering stuff, and Voldemort was seemingly perfectly fine with maintaining the cover. We also know that international wizard leagues and organisations have (at times) massively reduced the population of certain extremely dangerous dragons to diminish the chance of muggles finding out.

Whatever else happens in the Harry Potter, the one thing everyone seems to agree on is maintaining this misquerade. Sharing wonders of magic with the muggle world seems like an easy way to punch your ticket to Azkaban.

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The statute is the main reason the ministry exists, in all likelihood. Its cops are likely to be just as rabid about it as real life ones are about private property. Considering how cops act when minorities do minor violations of laws in real life, Azkaban is probably only half of them, the rest were "killed resisting arrest".

 

[Acolyte]

I'm confident the ministry enforces the statute on people trying to do so, especially if they're werewolves. And he's more likely to be "killed resisting arrest" than get the slap on the wrist a wizards without his illness would get considering the views on lycanthropy.

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They could just leave and live in the middle of the Atlantic or the Sahara or the antarctic. We know they can make submersible ships. They have 70% of the world free to themselves.

 

[open_sketch]

They could just leave and live in the middle of the Atlantic or the Sahara or the antarctic. We know they can make submersible ships. They have 70% of the world free to themselves.

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Right, yes, just abandon all of society and all ties to anyone else to live in self-imposed solitary exile in the hope nobody tracks you down.

A completely workable and practical idea for human beings to enact.

 

[Acolyte]

Right, yes, just abandon all of society and all ties to anyone else to live in self-imposed solitary exile in the hope nobody tracks you down.

A completely workable and practical idea for human beings to enact.

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Form a anarchist community in a old galleon with like minded people. Or a equitable one. They clearly have some level of organization available to them.

It's a perfectly viable plan.

 

[10ebbor10]

Form a anarchist community in a old galleon with like minded people.

It's a perfectly viable plan.

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I think you're confusing "a wizard can do X" with "any wizard can do X".

Like, just because one school manages to show of with a fancy underwater boat, doesn't mean that everyone can.

We know from a few elements that a lot of people aren't actually all that good at magic. For example, Fred and George Weasly sold a hat that had a very simple shielding charm bound into it as a joke item, and it was a massive success because the vast majority of wizards are apparently incapable of performing a reliable protection spell. Even the ministry bought them.

"Well, we thought Shield Hats were a bit of a laugh, you know, challenge your mate to jinx you while wearing it and watch his face when the jinx just bounces off. But the Ministry bought five hundred for all its support staff! And we're still getting massive orders!"

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In Hogwarts, the people only survived the siege because they had a fancy, ancient room of magical magicalness that provided for nearly all their needs. Without it, they would have folded within weeks.
Put simply, any given anarchist community is unlikely to have the resources, talent or time to pull of these large scale magical artefacts.

Even if they do, the time and effort needed to prepare for such an endeavor would draw attention.

Edit : We can build self-sustaining communities today. We have the technology for that.
THe only people building them are billionaires thinking they're going to survive the apocalypse hiding in New Zealand, because they're the only ones who can afford it.

 

[RoboRenee]

Form a anarchist community in a old galleon with like minded people. Or a equitable one. They clearly have some level of organization available to them.

It's a perfectly viable plan.

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Big 'spherical cow in a vacuum' vibes

 

[Acolyte]

Big 'spherical cow in a vacuum' vibes

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It's better than living in what is clearly a very dysfunctional and oppressive society.

 

[Nyvis]

They could just leave and live in the middle of the Atlantic or the Sahara or the antarctic. We know they can make submersible ships. They have 70% of the world free to themselves.

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Do you think the ICW takes kindly to people setting up rogue states? I expect it's used as an enforcer of the status quo for people who try to dodge out of established ministries' borders.

In addition to that I expect 7 years of schooling is not nearly enough to teach you everything you'd need to run a functional society even if magic made that possible with a handful of people and no natural resources. A lot of stuff is probably gated behind expensive copy-proof books or apprenticeships. And even then, intentional communities tend to fail, doubly so if isolated.

 

[Death_Sheep]

Two thoughts from reading the original post and the subsequent comments:

1. Looked at from the right angle, I can totally see Hermione as a second-wave TERF--especially given that JKR has explicitly said that when she was writing the books, Hermione was essentially her author avatar, and the way that feminism in the UK developed as compared to feminism in the USA.

2. The biggest reason for Lupin's economic problems is Lupin. Or, more specifically, his psychological problems of depression and self-hatred (partly social conditioning, partly depression being a lying liar who lies).

 

[illhousen]

TBF, I don't think it's super useful to analyze material conditions of magical Britain or try to extrapolate magical capabilities and their potential effects on society because such attempts inevitably run into the issue of world-building outside Hogwarts not actually existing.

Like, to begin with, how many wizards are there, anyway? I've seen estimates anywhere between 10k and a million. Depending on which one you accept as reasonable, that would give you vastly different social dynamics. In the low estimates, "me and a bunch of my friends from school" would make a significant political block the nation would have to take seriously.

Similarly with magic feats: depending on how you extrapolate them, what limits you think are there, what pressures wizards face to not use certain kinds of magic, etc., you can get results ranging from "magical Britain should be a bloody survival horror" all the way to "magical Britain should be a post-scarcity utopia".

In the end, only Hogwarts is real. The farther you go away from its walls, the more sketchy and abstract everything becomes: a vague pastiche of British society where you're invited to fill the gaps yourself.

This story works because it approaches the topic from a somewhat meta perspective by projecting IRL concerns and issues into a setting that mostly ignores them as well as highlighting things in the text that, in retrospect, make the source material look bad. It's a reflection of disillusionment many people feel towards HP.

This is why it works better as a oneshot: should the story be expanded, the author would have to invent a lot of stuff about how magical society actually works, providing much more details than Rowling ever did, given this story's political focus, which would turn it into a heavy AU, diminishing its ability to directly critique the source material.

 

[Nyvis]

Like, to begin with, how many wizards are there, anyway? I've seen estimates anywhere between 10k and a million. Depending on which one you accept as reasonable, that would give you vastly different social dynamics. In the low estimates, "me and a bunch of my friends from school" would make a significant political block the nation would have to take seriously.

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The only thing that muddles number estimates on wizarding population is the throwaway number for the world cup seating amount.

If you ignore this one tidbit, the fact there's only a single school in Britain and its class size is known makes the 10k number fit pretty well. I think we can just assume the ministry is bragging about its world cup stadium and the numbers are fake because nothing in the books ever suggest the magical world is bigger than what little we've shown.