Getting the Goods in Wizardom

[jferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 43440

catlady_de_los_angeles (Rita):"Magic raises questions about raw 
materials and intermediate products ... do robe-makers buy cloth or 
conjure up cloth? If the robe-makers buy cloth (probably from a 
middle-man, a jobber), is it cloth that was conjured up or 
Transfigured from raw materials by wizarding clothmakers, woven 
(perhaps on magical looms) by wizarding weavers in scattered homes or 
in factories, or woven by Muggles? If it was woven by wizards (whether 
Muggle-ishly, on enchanted looms, or simply by waving a wand over a 
pile of warp and woof threads), where did they  get the raw materials? 
"

You know, we don't have a window on the wizard world through the Harry 
Potter books, we have a tiny little peephole, and 90% of our debates 
arise from that fact. Those are all excellent questions. We do know 
that magic is to the wizarding world what science is to us, so it 
would be used in everything wizards do.

For no particular reason, I tend towards the "low-tech" view of 
wizarding - IOW, magic would be used to spin thread and then run a 
loom, instead of cloth being just conjured up. I believe there's 
limits to magic, some of them self-imposed. I once postulated for a 
story that wizarding parents mostly change their babies the same way 
we do, instead of by magic. Why? It strengthens the [magical] bond 
between parent and child.

By the Law of Contagion, objects become more related to the makers the 
more the makers are personally involved in making them. If that law 
applies in Harry's world, then if you make an object with your own 
hands then it is more bound to you, more "yours," than an object you 
buy or conjure up. Since wizards are closer to the things they make 
and use than us impersonal, industrial Muggles, I find that idea more 
attractive. Proof? None at all.

As far as food goes, I feel it must be that wizards' food sources are 
the same as ours. If wizards could conjure up all their essentials - 
food, clothing, and so on - then there wouldn't be any Galleons, 
Sickles, or Knuts, and the Weasley's "poverty" would be meaningless.