= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Psy-Kosh comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (866)
One more thought, this time money related stuff:
On the one hand, the magical and muggle economies are sufficiently separated that Gringots seems to not even notice the possibility of arbitrage...
But on the other hand, we're told that anyone who transfigures stuff to look like money, even muggle currency, is legally at war with the goblins. If the goblins are tracking muggle money enough to at least notice this sort of thing and care about it, that seems at odds with them being sufficiently ignorant of the muggle economy to not notice the arbitrage possibilities.
You shouldn't neglect the possibility that it's a law written because it seemed like a good idea, without any real way of enforcing it in general.
There are certainly plenty of those around.
Professor McGonagall more or less explicitly said though that they have ways of finding out, that this matter isn't an abstract law but is very very enforced.
Yes, but wouldn't it be reasonable to think they only have ways of finding out when presented with the money in question?
The goblins may only use that to check for Muggle currency that wizards try to turn in to the goblins. They may also have methods that just track objects transfigured to look like Muggle money. If goblins have similar cognitive flaws as humans, then they might be able to keep track of the economy for this one very specific purpose and not even realize that arbitrage was really a useful practice.
That seems plausible.
There might also be some laws restricting trade between the wizarding economy and the Muggle economy. In other words, if you take a bunch of Galleons and try to sell them to Muggles, you'll probably end up arrested or something. Part of the whole "Muggles can't be allowed to know about wizards, unless they're close relatives of wizards" thing.
You could avoid selling Galleons per se by melting them into bullion first. Maybe Galleons are unmeltable? Or the gold turns into leaves and gorse blossoms when handled extensively by Muggles? It seems like with magic at one's disposal one doesn't have to rely on mere law to prevent wizard/Muggle arbitrage.
No, that wouldn't work. In MoR, the routineness of coining Sickles implies that it's routine to coin ordinary gold into Galleons; if the coinage were irreversible, then you would see Gresham's law start to operate.
Ordinary gold would be more valuable then an equivalent weight of Galleons because you could at any time turn the gold into Galleons but with ordinary gold you have all the other decorative and magical uses of gold available. As Galleons are created and not destroyed, ever more inflation of Galleons and deflation of gold would happen.
(Have you ever bought funny money, like the Mickey Mouse money at Disney World? The Galleons would be like the Mickey Mouse money, and gold like regular dollars. Except worse.)
I am edified and grateful for it.
(Magical) code is law, but the laws of economics are more akin to laws of logic than legal laws - try to bend them, and you'll either accomplish nothing or it'll bite you somehow. You need subtler tactics than just unmeltable coins or disappearing specie.
Hrm... that's a possibility. Though when Harry asked Griphook, I think it was, about interaction between the two economies, he didn't say "no, that's illegal", but simply no. That's not proof, but I'd have thought it would come up if that was the issue. But other than that, maybe you're right.