from the I-thought-economic-theory-was-fiction dept.
What Harry Potter can (and can't) teach us about economics:
A new paper in Oxford Open Economics, published by Oxford University Press, explores "Potterian economics"—the economics of the world of J.K. Rawling's Harry Potter series. Comparing such economics with professional economic models indicates that while some aspects of this economy are in line with economic models, many other aspects are distorted, contradicting professional economists' views.
Evidence suggests that the public's economic literacy is low and that it acquires much of the knowledge about economics through books, newspapers, etc. There is also evidence that literature affects readers, shaping their views. It is, therefore, possible that the 7-book series may exert influence and reflect on the public's economic perspectives and sentiments. A conservative estimate suggests that more than 7.3% of the world's population has read the Potter books and millions more have seen their movie versions. Given such extraordinary popularity of the books, their effect on the economic sentiments of the public might be considerable.
[...] "A naïve reader of Harry Potter would get a distorted view of economics," said Daniel Levy, one of the paper's authors. "Consider some of the lessons we learn from Potterian economics: markets are not fair for transactions are zero sum; the political process is not transparent; markets encourage crony capitalism; capitalists want to enslave the proletariat; businessmen are deceptive and devious; wealthy people are mean and unethical; no interest is paid on deposits; there is a monopoly on information; power is concentrated; ignorance about foreigners is the norm; domestic producers are protected from foreign competition even if they are inefficient; paper checks are non-existent; creative thinking is rare; human capital does not accumulate; public employees have life-time job-security irrespective of their efficiency; the public sector is the default employer; downward social mobility is the norm; there is a constant class struggle. This is only a partial list."
"The shortcomings listed above characterize many real economies," Levy continued. "This perhaps explains why the Potterian economic model resonates with people. Despite its inaccuracies, it is consistent with folk economics, which while perhaps problematic for human flourishing in a Smithian sense, captures and reflects popular views on many economic and social issues."
Journal Reference:
Daniel Levy and Avichai Snir, Potterian economics [open], Oxford Open Economics, 1, 2022. DOI: 10.1093/ooec/odac004
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @02:33PM (12 children)
7% is peanuts compared to the unedited lies delivered to people via their phones.
"Consider some of the lessons we learn from Potterian economics"
That Rowling has a warped world view based on where she came from
and was able to deliver this through her volumes of propaganda.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by legont on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:50PM (9 children)
So, what economic system Start Track has? I mean does Captain Kirk has a mortgage to pay? Why not? Is it realistic to have a dedicated captain without a mortgage? Is it even wise?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Touché) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:03PM (2 children)
While Star Trek AFAIK never specifies exactly how economics works, it is a system where there exists no money.
No. And without money, there's no way he could.
Because there's no money.
Is anything in Star Trek realistic?
But then, why should a captain without mortgage be unrealistic? He doesn't own that ship, after all, he only commands it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Wednesday July 27 2022, @09:28PM
Yes and no. Star Trek is science fiction/fantasy, but it has inspired real creations in the real world.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday July 28 2022, @03:12AM
I remember them playing poker. Since money by definition is a commodity used for exchange, they sure had money; at least on Enterprise.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stormreaver on Wednesday July 27 2022, @09:20PM (5 children)
The Star Trek Federation does not use money. Everything a person needs for survival is provided, since material things can be easily spun out of thin air (literally) with the Replicator. Without the need to worry about necessities, people strive to better themselves and their societies. Kirk is a Captain because he has aptitude and willingness.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday July 28 2022, @03:06AM (4 children)
That's my point. Star Trek is a communist society. Generalizing, any successful future American society is communists, while any bad outcome is a laser fair capitalism.
If our brightest cultural leaders paint it this way, what do you expect?
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by deimtee on Thursday July 28 2022, @05:32AM
If you have replicator technology then your two alternatives are a star trekkian society, or artificial scarcity to grind the poor because you think it is immoral to not need to work.
I know which I would prefer, but sadly, I also know which is more likely.
George Orwell;
Also Orwell;
Orwell was +10 Insightful. Some more pithy quotes [allthatsinteresting.com].
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Thursday July 28 2022, @10:24PM (2 children)
Communism is where the State controls the means of production, and controls where those means get directed. Capitalism is where individuals (or groups of individuals) own the means of production, and decide where to apply those means.
Providing everyone with the means to live life however they want to live life is not Communism. There are lots of details Star Trek glosses over, because they are not important to the story being told, but there is most definitely no Communism involved. Individuals are free to own their own replicator, and do with it what they see fit, which is the opposite of Communism.
(Score: 2) by legont on Friday July 29 2022, @01:07AM (1 child)
You are mixing Communism with Socialism. It's Socialism where state has to control production and distribution because there is still scarcity. Communism is possible only when there is no scarcity, like with replicators in Star Trek.
Meantime where there is still scarcity - such as with starships that can't be replicated - it's state that controls both production and distribution in Star Trek. So it is a not a totally complete Communist society with some Socialism still present.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by stormreaver on Friday July 29 2022, @03:16PM
I wasn't, but there would be a good reason to if I was. They are both so closely intertwined that attempting to segregate them is a purely academic exercise. I intentionally don't bother specifying which of them I'm talking about for that very reason. For all intents and purposes*, they are the same thing.
Communism ONLY works, to the extent that it works at all (which it doesn't, in the long run), where there is scarcity. That's it's whole purpose. Without scarcity, Communism isn't even an afterthought.
It as nothing to do with scarcity, and everything to do with plot. If the plot called for a private individual to have a starship armed to the teeth, it would be so, and would not violate Federation standards until and unless that person turned the weapon against the Federation and/or its allies. Nothing in Star Trek prevents it except for storytelling.
-----------
* I hope that someone who uses "for all intensive purposes" has just learned the correct idiom.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by crafoo on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:12PM (1 child)
I learn everything I know from homeless catlady lesbians, filled with resentment and power fantasies.
(Score: 5, Funny) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:09PM
I knew SOMEONE would read my Free Willy fanfic. I'm glad you liked it.
(Score: 3, Offtopic) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday July 27 2022, @02:37PM (4 children)
Don't talk to me about the philosopher's/sorcerer's stone being needed to create gold. There are plenty of other ways for a magical person to generate wealth through magical means.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:04PM
TFP, which shockingly one can access without rendering unto Ceasar, identifies other non-magical methods for generating funds as well. PDF page 15 notes the risk-free arbitrage opportunity of selling muggles the gold from galleons and exchanging the muggle money for galleons at Gringotts.
(Score: 1) by aafcac on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:11PM (2 children)
If they were actually able to do that, which isn't unreasonable given the other magic, there would be no point in doing so as there would be so much gold as to make it worthless for exchange between magical folks.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday July 27 2022, @07:08PM (1 child)
Hence why the magic in most magical stories is so inconsistent and logically flawed, and why we probably shouldn't delve this deep into fantasies from a non-Watsonian perspective. Too many world breaking rules engineered to keep the illusion from falling apart.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aafcac on Thursday July 28 2022, @04:13PM
Yes, that's a pretty significant problem. In terms of Harry Potter, it was a mistake to introduce time-travel magic when Hermione was using it to take the 2 classes at the same time and not set some sort of significant limitation to explain why they can't just do that when they do finally have their big showdown. Things like time-travel and bringing people back from the dead are incredibly hard to use in movies or books properly as they immediately lower the stakes of everything that happens later on.
I never saw that second Kingsmen movie, but from what I understand they used some similar "magic" to bring back one of the characters that had died in the first film, which pretty much destroys much of the possible tension in future films.
Personally, I've just accepted that in most cases the writers won't have thoroughly considered that and just go along with it and just forget about it as quickly as possible, but when writers get that right, it can lead to some pretty awesome stories.
(Score: 0, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday July 27 2022, @02:45PM (8 children)
The Christian and Islamic prohibition on usury has resulted in a third party who has historically filled the role of gouging people of their earnings through middleman leeching in the form of the directly related interest charged on loans which is how said third parties pay out on monies that are held in their vaults which people allow them to use to make money on in their own ways.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Wednesday July 27 2022, @02:55PM (7 children)
Rowling's magical bank is a secure storage facility rather than what we muggles call a bank.
(Score: 0, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:08PM (6 children)
It's not a bank as we know it because our banks operate off of usury.
(Score: 3, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:10PM (5 children)
Including the Christian and Islamic ones.
At least that one group you are singling out seems to actually follow their religion...
(Score: 0, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday July 27 2022, @07:06PM (4 children)
No, they don't.
They follow a religion they made up based on nothing that came before after Titus smashed their vain dreams into dust.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 27 2022, @08:28PM (3 children)
Jews are allowed to collect interest according to their religion. Christians and Islamic folks are not, according to you. Which group is violating their own damn religion by operating banks?
(Score: 0, Troll) by HammeredGlass on Wednesday July 27 2022, @11:44PM (2 children)
Merely a lot of people pretending to be Christians and Muslims, but are in actuality Jews. News at 11.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 28 2022, @02:53AM (1 child)
Damn, dude...I actually thought you were making a valid point for awhile there.
This has got to be the deepest into an argument I've gotten before tripping over the troll "THEREFORE GOD DAMNED JEWS" punchline at the end.
(Score: 2) by HammeredGlass on Thursday July 28 2022, @04:57PM
It was there from the beginning. You're just not tuned into the ways of the weird.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:00PM (16 children)
...it's a fantasy series. Why are we studying this seriously in the first place?
Okay, sure. But on *economics*? I don't really remember that being an important part of the books, and *really* doubt they hyped it up in the movies, which I only saw through Order of the Phoenix IIRC.
And statistically speaking, I *might* be the Queen of England. Yay for weasel words!
Not seeming terribly off-base so far LOL
Is this something the books said, or just didn't bother to explicitly point out that it *is* paid?
OK
I'm sure there are absolutely places where this is still the norm. Go back a century or two and high tariffs was a common practice with Mercantilism, wasn't it?
Kind of yeah
What? You just said this was a distorted view!
Wow. So not only was this entire premise pretty shaky to begin with, after all that whining you trolled me, too.
Fuck off PotterEcon weirdo
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by Booga1 on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:12PM (2 children)
This entire piece reads like a highschool term paper. It is self-contradictory and full of wild speculations about the readers of the series. I doubt anyone thinks it is a serious source of information for economics beyond the fantasy world contained in it.
In short, this article is worthless drivel not worth reading.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:02PM (1 child)
The question is whether this quality is typical for economics papers. I can't tell because I don't read them, but I remember one talk by Hans Werner Sinn I've attended, where he interpreted a diagram that was basically a big point cloud with about three outliers close together. A straight line was “fitted” to that point cloud (square quotes because it didn't really fit, though I'm sure it's what the fit algorithm gave as best fit), and then conclusions were drawn from the slope of that line. I can tell you if you would have submitted that graph in a physics paper, the referees would have rejected that immediately with very strong words.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Zinho on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:10PM
My dad had a wake-up call regarding experimental data when he helped my sister with a science fair project. His prior experience with graphing experimental data was from a sociology class he'd taken back in his undergrad days, and he was used to quite squishy data.
So, my sister's experiment was to construct an AC transformer and measure the increase in voltage per 10 windings. They graphed the data by hand, using a pretty good ruler and fine-ruled graph paper. When my dad went to draw the trend line he was shocked at how linear it was. He literally couldn't draw a straight line through the points where the scatter was larger than the width of his finest pencil lead.
His reaction was something along the lines of, "so that's why my physicist buddies were making fun of my graphs..."
Eye opening.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:32PM (11 children)
They argue that this body of work was so popular that it forms a common background, a shared cultural meme, for a statistically significant portion of the population. They buttress this argument by pointing that 'The Half-Blood Prince' is #5 on the "most copies sold" list after the The Quran, The KJV Bible, Mao's little red book, and Don Quixote.
The $0.02 question is, if a work of fiction and fantasy significantly shapes how people view the world then is it worth academically examining that worldview? That question leads down an interesting rabbit hole, for me. I grew up with Star Trek TNG and DS9 as my dearest companions, and they still live in my head. Stepping back a generation, my father had a strong attachment to John Wayne and Louis Lamour's westerns. I wonder how those unconsciously shape our worldviews.
What fictional worlds, if any, set or change how you see the world? Thinking about it out loud, I confess I've made life choices based on "Specialization is for Insects". Good god, let's hope I didn't pick up everything from Mr. Heinlein. :)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by aafcac on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:14PM
That's the usual reason. Take something that is popular because people are likely both interested and familiar with the material and then use that to try and explain something in the real world. I'm not surprised in this case that things can be rather speculative as this wasn't ever a major focus of the books. Perhaps somebody will write something like this for accountants, but this was written for the general population that's less interested in banking regulations and the implications of infinite money generation on the economy at large.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:12PM (6 children)
Well Ayn Rand has actually been read by far fewer people I would wager but people are still discussing it like it's economics not fantasy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:20PM (5 children)
Talking of longevity... Jesus himself wrote a book or two. Not as believeable as the Rowling stuff tho.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:25PM (3 children)
No, the story goes that Jesus didn't write anything down himself, but rather his followers did (same as Mohammed) some years later. I would imagine that, given the time, Jesus probably wouldn't have even been literate.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:42PM (2 children)
Waidddaminute! Are you saying the Bible is not the literal Word of God himself????! The fuck!?
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 27 2022, @07:26PM
Well there's the argument of "divine revelation" but it's sort of third-hand, and there were no gold tablets and sticking a monocle in a hat involved like the Mormons. Or at least I haven't heard any younger and hipper denominations making that claim yet.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 28 2022, @12:36AM
You laugh at the idea, but I was raised to believe this. One of our pastors, now deceased, believed it and preached it fervently.
For all its bad points, I appreciate very much how religion comforted my mother when she was widowed and as she approached her own death. Bless them for that.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday July 29 2022, @12:07AM
Richard Carrier makes credible arguments that the Biblical Jesus probably did not exist. The New Testament is worse than fiction, it is a set of deliberate frauds.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:19PM (2 children)
It's a bit different examining e.g. the morality of Star Trek, when that was what the show was clearly about, vs *economics* in Harry Potter, though. I wouldn't study TNG for what it said about drink mixology...
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday July 28 2022, @02:14AM
I do copy Troi's Triple Chocolate Sundae, scaled down a bit since I actually eat mine. :)
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday July 29 2022, @07:06AM
The gears of the future economy are greased with ... prune juice?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday July 27 2022, @11:17PM
Apparently this "economist" studied Harry Potter to take a break from fantasy and look at something closer to reality than his usual study. He failed to improve as a result.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Gaaark on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:05PM (13 children)
They got paid for this?
If people are getting their economics lessons from Harry Fecking (his real middle name... FACT!) Potter, that's just piss poor schooling.
Like when they said that the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner hour was the most violent show on TV: wow... just wow.
"Peoples is dumb" seems to still be true.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:31PM (8 children)
Oh, come on, don't be such a killjoy. Applying critical thinking to popular culture can be a lot of fun. I hadn't thought to criticize Harry Potter economics, but am glad someone did.
Mostly, I've thought about Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings security. Fantasy security is weirdly strong and weak. Like, entering Moria. Boromir was right. The password has been unchanged for 1000 years, and Gandalf didn't come prepared knowing it beforehand? WTF? Had to crack it. Fortunately for Gandalf, the password was real weak. There was also the monster guardian that would be pathetically easy to bypass, with a little time. Just countermine, jeez! Additional bonus is that you also bypass the password locked door. The fellowship didn't have time for that, but the dwarves who tried to reoccupy Moria had 5 years. Or are you telling me that the dwarves couldn't open another exit to the west in that length of time? No, instead, they lost Oin to the monster.
In Harry Potter, we have the group password. The whole house of Griffindor uses the same password. Weak. They could've arranged a better system than that. The craziest part is that they had magical portraits enforcing this password system, portraits of people who could have learned everyone's faces, rather than play along with such a silly system. Then there's the bank security at Gringotts, the home security that was pretty good as long as the secret keepers weren't compromised, Voldemort's warped security for his horcruxes that failed miserably in part because it was so warped, and lots more.
Another thing is governance. Fantasies often go for kingdoms, and focus way too much on royalty. At least Harry Potter does not.
> They got paid for this?
Why, yes. These economists are real! If they were doing this for free, I'd have to wonder about their devotion.
And, yes, fantasy is fantasy. That is to say, it conveniently ignores all kinds of issues you can't ignore in the real world. But the big problem with fantasy is that you have to ignore lots of reality, or the fantasy just does not work. It's a gross simplification of reality, the simplifications chosen for their appeal, and not for their importance. We have to model reality, so don't knock fantasy for that. It is only for the kinds of simplifications a fantasy should be criticized, and unlike the works of Ayn Rand, Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings uses fairly benign ones. As the quip goes: "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @04:51PM (7 children)
The important lesson is to STOP ordering smashed avocado toast, kids. Then you'll be able to afford to buy a home like I did 40 years ago and take European vacations and raise a family on 1 job.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:16PM (4 children)
40 years ago you could by a house here for under $50k and have something really nice. Now those same houses cost the better part of a million dollars and that's before considering the implications of interest rates and inflation along with wage stagnation. It's also worth noting that roughly 40 years ago was about the time that wage growth stopped being anywhere near what inflation was and that the gap between both the inflation adjusted wages and the cost of housing has increased substantially. It's hard to save up for a house, if your rent is taking up most of your income.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:34PM
Hark the avocado toast eater!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:45PM (2 children)
The best way to make that comparison is how many years of the [average / median / minimum] wage it would take to buy a house. When my parents bought theirs 50 years ago it was about three. Now it's over ten.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday July 29 2022, @12:27AM (1 child)
50 years ago the population of the U.S. was about 200 million, now it's about 330 million. The average house today is much bigger than 50 years ago. Construction standards for safety (electrical and plumbing codes, radon venting, etc.) make new construction more expensive. A valid comparison is not possible, and to even come close the 2022 estimate would have to be for a house much further from downtown than 1972.
For median wage and median new home price, the figure is actually about 5 years -- $425,000 / $92,000.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 29 2022, @01:50PM
[average / median / minimum]
It was actually about [3/4/6]. Now it's about [6/10/20].
Note the change in ratios. The problem isn't just that the housing prices have gone up, it's that the income disparity has skyrocketed. Yeah the average income can still buy a house, but that "average" includes a lot of very high incomes. For low income people, it was just possible at 6. At 10 it's very difficult, and you need to take a 25 or 30 year mortgage where you are practically paying interest-only for 10 years while waiting for inflation to catch up, so you can afford to pay some of the principal.
At 20 it is impossible.
There are plenty of 50 year old houses out there. They are not noticeably cheaper.
I think you are mixing data here. New houses are not $425000 in places where the median income is $92000.
Or is $425000 the cost of construction and you are not including the cost of the land?
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:31PM (1 child)
My takeaway was that poor economic literacy can lead to poor financial decisions that greatly impact a person's financial health, but we can make it about toast if you want.
On a related note, Homemade Avocado Toast ($1 loaf bread, $3 bag of avocados from Aldis, with salt and pepper to taste) is a lovely and economical breakfast.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:36PM
OK, so you will die alone and penniless under a bridge. Don't say we didn't warn you about the avocado and the toast.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:56PM
How many hours are given on certain networks for espousing the One Economic System Example to Rule Them All: Atlas Shrugged ?
(or is it Fountainhead? Or is it both? I can't remember which one is used as examples in economic arguments as to why we need to kill social programs -- but curiously not other government "handouts" like to businesses)
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:15PM (1 child)
And yet people quote 'Atlas Shrugged' like it's the frikken' Economic Bible!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @06:23PM
See also Bush Doctrine and Trump Policy.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Wednesday July 27 2022, @07:55PM
Sorry, but you're wrong. Everything you encounter goes into your mind, and mixes with everything else. It gets flavored with a taste of how important you thought it was. Truth isn't directly involved, though it can affect how important you thought it was. Years later it comes back out in digested form, and you don't really know where which belief came from. (Well, sometimes you can make pretty good guesses, but often you don't even notice that you're regurgitating something based on what you read/encountered/heard about a year or a decade ago.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RedGreen on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:14PM (3 children)
"the political process is not transparent; markets encourage crony capitalism; capitalists want to enslave the proletariat; businessmen are deceptive and devious; wealthy people are mean and unethical;"
Seems like a perfectly clear list of what is reality describing the scummy bastards and their behaviour to me. The author must have some agenda to try and discredit the points made in the series, having never had the desire to read the books or see the movies I will have to take his word about the spot on descriptions in the points he lists.
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 4, Interesting) by helel on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:30PM (1 child)
To be fair wealthy people are, in my experience, polite and so horrifically malicious that "unethical" doesn't really do their impact on the world justice. See, children lit is teaching an unfounded view of the world!
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @05:38PM
> polite and so horrifically malicious
BINGO! Welcome to the adult world.
https://www.scribd.com/document/272406087/The-Human-Evasion-by-Celia-Green [scribd.com]
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Friday July 29 2022, @12:39AM
I distinctly recall the man who sold Harry his wand being helpful and honest. Generally, the Potter books have very little to do with market experience. There's a large focus on corruption and power, personal morality and responsibility, bias and prejudice, education and growing up. Tying this to capitalism occurs only in the confused mind of the article's author.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:41PM
I'm not a big fantasy fan. But it's nice to see that at least the economy in a fantasy book is rooted in reality. No wonder the books are popular, people actually have something they can relate to.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 27 2022, @03:50PM
Who's that Rawling they are talking about? Any why doesn't that person get in trouble for violating the Harry Potter trademark? :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 27 2022, @09:54PM
Weren't elves used as slave labor to prepare the feast and other stuff?
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Wednesday July 27 2022, @11:23PM
There's nothing really notable about this, other than Rowling needing to provide background to the events and not wanting to spend years/decades in developing a complex economy that mirrors the real world. As to some of the notes about rich people being mean - that's just shorthand that we see in most fiction these days. She even managed the nail the Hollywood bit about villains always having a British accent!
I agree that it's weird that Wizards in the Potterverse seem to only have one of two career options: Work for the Ministry of Magic, or open a shop on Diagon Alley. However, Rowling didn't _need_ any more than that for the backdrop of her stories, and creating fully fleshed out world details outside of the students' direct experiences world would take time away from the story she actually wanted to tell.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Thursday July 28 2022, @06:48AM
The alt-wrong never liked Harry Potter. People who believed in fairies in real life hated it because they thought those books were teaching children about black magic. That's right, grown adults believed in magic and were determined to foist their paranoia on children and everyone else. Now it appears that they're also feeling a little offended because of some perceived criticism of current politics and economics. Oh dear. It's literature (loosely) and it has always been literature's place to explore ideas and to express opinions. Judging by this reaction It's doing its job. Lighten up. It's fantasy. It isn't real. It's all made up. We understand that. We have brains and we can use them. Next thing you know the alt-wrong will be burning books and attacking libraries.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].