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wizardofloneliness posted:Still confused about how being poor even works when you’re a wizard. I've said this before but if the Weasley's are even any indication, you just mainly just don't have access to luxury wizard items as well as maybe some wizarding spaces? Like Hogwarts I don't think has tuition since it is seemingly mandatory for anyone with wizard powers, but you sure as poo poo have to buy official robes and text books and poo poo (man what a racket honestly). Ron's main complaints throughout the series are like: he can't afford a very good racing broom, he gets ugly dress robes, he can't afford as many treats in the places you buy treats (the Hogwarts Express, the Quidditch World Cup, Hodsmeade) and his wand doesn't get replaced quickly in the second year, tho that is also as a form of punishment as much as anything. The weird thing is it's never really covered why they can't just like enchant their own brooms or use magic to make cooler clothes or whatever. Maybe racing brooms are regulated I guess, and maybe the spells to create them are heavily guarded secrets? Maybe it is illegal to duplicate certain purchased goods so Ron never just bugs Hermione to buy one Pumpkin Pastie then infinite glitch an endless supply? A lot of this is hand waved by Ron and Harry being too loving lazy and unimaginative to actually try to do anything cool with their magic but you'd think with Fred and George being so ambitious about their joke shop or the other older brothers being said to be geniuses they might walk in one day and be like "oh hey mom I knew you wanted help with the laundry and we can't afford a house elf so I whipped up this magic cauldron that cleans, dries and sorts everything for you, love you happy Mother's Day!"
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Aug 4, 2025 22:08
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Fred and George should simply make counterfeit galleons, as a joke
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Aug 4, 2025 22:42
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you broke my grill posted:Fred and George should simply make counterfeit galleons, as a joke I'm pretty sure that sort of thing gets you flayed alive by a Goblin strike team
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Aug 4, 2025 22:44
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Hermione did that for DA meetings and no one got to her yet.
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Aug 5, 2025 02:36
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Speaking of galleons. It's kinda weird that there's no paper currency. So whenever you have to buy something really fancy you have bring a wheelbarrow full of coins.
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Aug 5, 2025 05:13
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Alhazred posted:Speaking of galleons. It's kinda weird that there's no paper currency. So whenever you have to buy something really fancy you have bring a wheelbarrow full of coins. bag of holding
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Aug 5, 2025 05:14
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Carrying your own money? That’s servant stuff. You’d obviously send your house elf back and forth until the proper amount of money had been transferred.
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Aug 5, 2025 05:16
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Guy A. Person posted:I've said this before but if the Weasley's are even any indication, you just mainly just don't have access to luxury wizard items as well as maybe some wizarding spaces? I think the implication is you need specialized professionals to get the quality stuff, if you do it yourself it's the equivalent of getting those ugly sweaters from their mother.
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Aug 5, 2025 06:09
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Alhazred posted:Speaking of galleons. It's kinda weird that there's no paper currency. So whenever you have to buy something really fancy you have bring a wheelbarrow full of coins. Everyone banks at the same place, so you send a note to the goblins to transfer your gold to their vault.
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Aug 5, 2025 07:32
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wizardofloneliness posted:Still confused about how being poor even works when you’re a wizard. You don't have house-elf slaves and a vault full of gold in the goblin bank.
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Aug 5, 2025 11:58
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shocked the goblins havent come up with a magical checking system, just tap a piece of paper saying you're paying 500 galleons to whoever and it just magically appears in someone else's vault at gringotts
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Aug 5, 2025 13:34
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Maybe they have? The actual vaults might just be for show.
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Aug 5, 2025 16:24
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Can't be, because the books show Harry and Mrs. Weasley gathering up coins out of their vaults to pay for things. But the concept of checks or automatic transfers is way too advanced for a group of people who thought a prime number-based monetary system was a swell idea.
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Aug 5, 2025 16:40
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I’m positive there is a tortured acronym for “cheque” where the “he” is “house elf”, but I’m too tired to think one up right now.
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Aug 5, 2025 17:43
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Zombies magazine posted:shocked the goblins havent come up with a magical checking system, just tap a piece of paper saying you're paying 500 galleons to whoever and it just magically appears in someone else's vault at gringotts Yeah this is kinda similar to how house points work, right?
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Aug 5, 2025 18:36
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Grundulum posted:I’m positive there is a tortured acronym for “cheque” where the “he” is “house elf”, but I’m too tired to think one up right now. carrier house elf quick unencumbered exchange
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Aug 5, 2025 18:53
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YaketySass posted:I think the implication is you need specialized professionals to get the quality stuff, if you do it yourself it's the equivalent of getting those ugly sweaters from their mother. I liked in earlier Discworld novels, that you had to put as much effort into creating a spell as it would take doing the thing it's replicating. So well-to-do wizards just have sweatshops working up spells for them to store in their staves.
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Aug 5, 2025 19:09
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Grundulum posted:I’m positive there is a tortured acronym for “cheque” where the “he” is “house elf”, but I’m too tired to think one up right now. economy comes from eco meaning house and gnome meaning elf
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Aug 5, 2025 19:16
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Grundulum posted:I’m positive there is a tortured acronym for “cheque” where the “he” is “house elf”, but I’m too tired to think one up right now. Black Hermione protesting against the Centaurs, House-Elves, Queers: Undesirables, Exterminate system while the other characters calmly explain that she's being irrational (the system is named for the mission statement of the malfoy-founded charity that takes a 2% cut of every purchase made by CHEQUE)
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Aug 5, 2025 19:28
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YaketySass posted:economy comes from eco meaning house and gnome meaning elf Either you got this from Terry Pratchett, in which case you have good taste, or you came up with it independently, in which case you should feel proud.
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Aug 5, 2025 19:28
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I like how Ron’s punishment for breaking his wand was to just suck at school for a year since it’s required for all classes except the History one. Plus that was before we got all the weird wand lore and it was more “you need to find a special wand attuned to you otherwise you kind of suck”
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Aug 5, 2025 19:30
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When you put it like that, the wand lore sounds like it was made up at the last minute, Jo. 
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Aug 5, 2025 19:34
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bobjr posted:I like how Ron’s punishment for breaking his wand was to just suck at school for a year since it’s required for all classes except the History one. Let's be real here, Ron breaking his wand turned him from a C student to a C- student
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Aug 5, 2025 19:41
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Neville was also using his dad's wand instead of his own. You'd think wizards would know how these things work.
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Aug 5, 2025 19:42
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bobjr posted:I like how Ron’s punishment for breaking his wand was to just suck at school for a year since it’s required for all classes except the History one. I mean Crabbe and Goyle are basically nonverbal. Given it's mostly run to benefit the highly inbred class, the Hogwarts academic standards are probably not what you'd call stellar.
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Aug 5, 2025 19:49
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Presto posted:But the concept of checks or automatic transfers is way too advanced for a group of people who thought a prime number-based monetary system was a swell idea. wait lmao what is the lore on this, this is one i don't remember
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Aug 5, 2025 20:00
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I think it is just talking about how wizards use pre-decimalization money. Where you had one Pound being 20 shillings and each shilling was 12 pence. Which would also breaking down into halfpennies and farthings and could add up to stuff like florins or guineas.
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Aug 5, 2025 20:25
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Right, except wizards use 29 knuts to a sickle, and 17 sickles to a galleon.
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Aug 5, 2025 20:37
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Is it ever actually explained why wizards have their own shadow economy of bespoke gold coins like they all work for the Continental instead of, like, using regular-rear end money? Were there concerns about Wizards putting poo poo like "magic wands" on their mundane tax returns as business expenses and blowing the whole Masquerade?
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Aug 5, 2025 20:48
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If we ignore manufacturing concerns, which wizards obviously don't have, gold coins are a better system of currency than paper money. Sure, they weigh more, but they're less perishable and easier to quantify in large numbers. Counterfeiting would be an issue, but these are wizards, they can counterfeit anything e: coins are also easier to differentiate through touch, which doesn't sound like a lot, but is more convenient for everybody RubiconCrosser fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Aug 5, 2025 |
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Aug 5, 2025 22:27
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Wizard economy is actually extremely advanced in that they have managed, in spite of everything magic can do, to avoid becoming a post-scarcity society. That takes efforts.
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Aug 5, 2025 22:47
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Presto posted:Can't be, because the books show Harry and Mrs. Weasley gathering up coins out of their vaults to pay for things. The silliest bit to me, in retrospect as an adult, is that the contents of their bank accounts really are just piles of coins in locked vaults. Like, this is a bank, that's not how banks work. When you're a kid you might think it's as just a place to safely keep your money but if you're a grown adult with a career (like writing a fantasy series, to name an example at random) surely you understand that the bank has borrowed your money from you and is using it to make more money, offering to pay you back on demand. It's not just sitting in a big box. What do all these goblins actually do in their jobs
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Aug 5, 2025 22:57
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The goblins are satisfied that they own all of the money in the vaults, moving it around arbitrarily keeps the wizards happy, and any that gets removed to be used as hard currency is just being borrowed and will eventually make its way back to them.
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Aug 5, 2025 23:04
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RubiconCrosser posted:If we ignore manufacturing concerns, which wizards obviously don't have, gold coins are a better system of currency than paper money. Sure, they weigh more, but they're less perishable and easier to quantify in large numbers. Counterfeiting would be an issue, but these are wizards, they can counterfeit anything I'm not even sure it'd count as counterfeit. A coin made of solid gold 'the size of a hubcap' is going to have intrinsic worth, even if it's not legal tender
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Aug 5, 2025 23:52
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Wolfechu posted:I'm not even sure it'd count as counterfeit. A coin made of solid gold 'the size of a hubcap' is going to have intrinsic worth, even if it's not legal tender Must suck for the guy working at the corner shop every time some Wizard comes in for some muggle Jaffa Cakes or some Monster Munch or whatever and they try to pay by whittling a sliver of gold off a Galleon like they're a weird off the grid Libertarian
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Aug 6, 2025 00:25
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Asterite34 posted:Must suck for the guy working at the corner shop every time some Wizard comes in for some muggle Jaffa Cakes or some Monster Munch or whatever and they try to pay by whittling a sliver of gold off a Galleon like they're a weird off the grid Libertarian They probably just take the item they want and Obliviate the shopkeeper, not like they give a poo poo about Muggles.
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Aug 6, 2025 00:30
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Asterite34 posted:Must suck for the guy working at the corner shop every time some Wizard comes in for some muggle Jaffa Cakes or some Monster Munch or whatever and they try to pay by whittling a sliver of gold off a Galleon like they're a weird off the grid Libertarian You've never seen a British shopkeeper's face if you buy a drink and want change from a twenty
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Aug 6, 2025 00:40
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muscles like this! posted:They probably just take the item they want and Obliviate the shopkeeper, not like they give a poo poo about Muggles. Too much effort, just have the elf go get it.
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Aug 6, 2025 02:48
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RubiconCrosser posted:If we ignore manufacturing concerns, which wizards obviously don't have, gold coins are a better system of currency than paper money. Sure, they weigh more, but they're less perishable and easier to quantify in large numbers. Counterfeiting would be an issue, but these are wizards, they can counterfeit anything Alhazred fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Aug 6, 2025 |
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Aug 6, 2025 06:31
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A brief estimation of a gold coin the size of a hubcap, which i definitely just made numbers up for and arbitrarily said was 2cm thick with a 20cm radius, returns something like a 50-60kg coin.
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Aug 7, 2025 00:12
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