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MugaSofer comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong
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I suspect anyone bringing in such a large pile of gold would be immediately arrested, or at least investigated, unless they had a damn good story.
Why? The goblins take a percentage for the minting, so they want the minting to go ahead.
But does the Ministry - who are the ones with aurors - want muggles wondering why there's so little gold nowadays? Not to mention the sudden rich people messing up the established power balance.
Again, why would the Ministry not take the gold for themselves instead of guarding it for the Muggles? Note that the explanation has to hold across all of recorded history, in many nations and times.
Why would the Ministry do that? I'm kind of drawing a blank here. Sure, the Magical government (maybe not the Ministry, since you can be fined for breaking the statute of secrecy) could probably pull it off (although it would have all sorts of repercussions.) But ... I'm having a hard time imagining them doing so.
Honestly, can you imagine a Muggle government doing something like that? I mean, it's not perfectly analogous, but I'd say your average army could fill in for magic here.
I didn't mean the Ministry would steal Muggle gold and put it in the Ministry fund. I meant some Minister, or Head Auror, or other well-connected person, would steal it for himself (plus bribes to the guards to look the other way).
And yes, I totally believe that Muggle ministers would do that if they could, and in fact have done so many times in Muggle history.
Oh, right. Yeah, that's a bit more plausible, I have to admit.
And yet ... still very hard. Unless you're already really really rich? I guess?
Well, maybe via war...
Nope, sometimes the government just steals everyone's gold.
That ... doesn't seem like a great example.
It used to be that governments would debase their coinage whenever they needed money. Today, of course, we're all taught that constant inflation is good for us.
Which, while admittedly very annoying to those poor suckers who already possess money, is rather different to launching a strike team to physically empty bank vaults.
Everyone does what they can. There have been many incidencts when Muggle governments expropriated privately owned gold (or other riches). They wouldn't do it to themselves, of course, so the central bank vaults remained safe.
But the point is, only the arbiters of ultimate power (or their clients) can be truly rich; if anyone else is richer than they are, they will tend to take the riches by force. In the HP-verse, wizards have the ultimate power.