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DanArmak comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 26, chapter 97 - Less Wrong
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It doesn't matter that much if some wannabe thieves get caught. Only one thief needs to succeed per vault per century to make all the Muggle gold disappear. An alarm isn't enough against several wizards who take the time to prepare a raid. Only a round the clock guard would be enough. If Aurors guard all the big Muggle gold vaults (or that the goblins or their dragons do), that might be a sufficient deterrent.
What isn't clear is why they would install alarms or provide guards, instead of just taking the gold themselves.
Well, if it's an unusual idea to start with, and hard to hide - I mean, if you don't get suddenly and suspiciously rich, what's the point? - and most people get filtered out because their brilliant and original plan was actually anticipated (remember, the whole point of stealing from muggles is that they wont have magical protections) ... I can see it being pretty much a non-starter.
Also, is that actually true? I mean, there's only so much gold per vault, only so much time for this to have happened in, and so on. Heck, would we even still use vaults if "police baffled by fort knox raid" showed up on the news every so often, to the point that the majority of Earth's gold was lost that way?
There's enough gold per value to make a successful thief the richest wizard in the world. And there have been big gold vaults for many centuries, with royal treasuries preceding them. And yet there hasn't been even one case in Muggle history of all the gold disappearing from a vault without explanation.
A thief could still succeed once. That we still use vaults indicates a thief has never succeeded. There's still something to explain.
Funnily enough, it occurred to me that I have no idea if any such cases* have* occurred. I still don't, because all the top Google hits seem to be conspiracy theories or something about how various gold reserves are totally empty. (Maybe a coverup would actually be possible with magic? Hmm ... Fort Knox hasn't been audited in 60 years, supposedly, so who knows?)
But honestly, who cares if you're the "richest wizard in the world" if you're in jail and your "wealth" is an unspendable stolen asset (remember, raw gold needs to be converted into coins)?
Yeah, I just meant that muggles wouldn't actually lose all the gold. It's a moot point, since clearly this hasn't happened either way.