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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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If the goblins allow wizards to bring in gold to be minted, as Griphook told Harry, then how would they decide what wizards to work with? Every wizard can steal an effectively unlimited amount of gold from Muggle vaults. If many wizards did so, and then the goblins refused to turn most of that gold into Galleons, this would probably act to break their monopoly as a market in gold and/or other coins naturally emerged.
Unless wizards all agree not to value raw gold at all, only Galleons. That seems implausible.
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.