Goblins

[Jesta Hijinx]

No: HPFGUIDX 60630

>It would depend I think on how monetised the WW economy actually is - for
>example, it's conceivable that a lot of transactions take place by barter
>rather than in cash. Our view is biased because the only transactions we've
>seen are the (slightly unusual) ones in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade. But out
>in the sticks (where it's reasonable to conclude that most wizards are
>engaged in some sort of craft production) then there could well be little
>need for money anyway - if I grow food and you weave robes, then we have
>scope for mutual transactions, just as I have with the local potion maker,
>wand repairer, and so on. In that sort of circumstance, a DE takeover of
>Gringotts would be bad news for the shopkeepers in Diagon Alley, but not
>necessarily fatal.
>
This is true enough - I imagine that many of the wizarding families live in 
more isolated and therefore more rural areas, or at least areas they can, 
for lack of a better term, somewhat "cloak" to make them less obvious to 
Muggles.  From the sounds of things, probably a fair number of wizards and 
witches live in London proper, where they will blend in with the other 
"freaks" ;-) - not an uncommon assumption in a large, busy metropolitan area 
full of strange trends - and they all make their way to Diagon Alley as 
students might go to the Quartier Latin in Paris and "hang out" and have a 
cuppa, or a pint, and do their serious shopping and their window shopping 
there.  Since Hogsmeade is the only entirely wizarding village in Britain, 
this suggests to me that other wizarding families are dotted about the 
island - my thought is that perhaps some have taken on a sort of cover, as 
we think Mrs. Figg might have done, to blend in for a purpose, or simply 
because they prefer to live more amalgamated into the Muggle community.  
(Perhaps those like Hermione, who have Muggle parents, are comfortable 
having grown up that way and have learned to blend their wizard selves into 
the community of their birth.)  On the other hand, this thinking about the 
bartering/possibly more small scale agrarian households with a sense of 
self-sufficiency is, for me, drawn from the example of the Weasleys - who 
don't seem to know anything at all about Muggle life, and therefore probably 
don't try to blend into their area, the kids have never gone to play with 
and meet Muggle children - and when they go to catch the Portkey to the QWC, 
it doesn't really sound like they hang out with nor get together much with 
their nearest wizarding neighbors, either.  Again, JKR has introduced some 
interesting sort of old-fashioned values there, before people had to worry 
so much about the modern world - although Arthur Weasley does commute to 
work, and even given I do know some rarified areas where there is still some 
barter (it's still not the basis of any household's personal economy that I 
personally know of any more, and I've lived in a lot of different areas, 
including Alaska and Australia) - and I like the fact that things that are 
both far "advanced" and things that linger behind seem to be part of the WW 
- it does seem to have grown up in her imagination completely different from 
and alien to the Muggle scale of what's important in technological advances 
and things to have (example - electricity vs. magically conjured fires, 
candle flames and lamps).

>The Sergeant Majorette said:
> >Thanks for these insights. I was having trouble with the concept of
> >our crazysexycool Bill Weasley as a grave-robbing imperialist. Also,
> >could it be that Gringott's is the Federal Reserve Bank of the WW,
> >i.e., the only one that officially interacts with financial entities
> >outside the WW, and that there might be local wizarding credit unions
> >or mutual aid societies that operate entirely in the community (as
> >the do in immigrant communities in NYC where I live)?
>
>If Gringotts are the only wizarding bank, then they'd be the bank for
>wizards in Egypt as well as here so there shouldn't be any question of
>imperialism. It's in the interest ( no pun intended) of the WW in any case
>for Gringotts to have access to a source of gold if, as seems possible, 
>they
>pay interest (either by magical means - your money literally grows in the
>vault, or by conventional means that compare to ours. All that gold has to
>come from _somewhere_).
>
*My* actual question of interest, of course, is by what right of domain or 
ownership do they have some crazysexycool guy like Bill breaking into graves 
and breaking curses anyway?  First come first served?  No one else could 
break the curses so Bill wins on behalf of Gringotts?  Why did Bill not 
become a contracting entrepreneur and charge a fat commission?  :-)  I know 
JKR has gone into great depth on most of her characters, event hough we 
won't get to see the results of that directly - I'm just kind of curious if 
this is one of the areas she's thought through, and obviously I'd love to 
know how it "works".  :-)  But it doesn't really drive the story, so I doubt 
I shall.  :-)

I agree - it's most logical that there is some form of simple interest on 
the money.  There could be an "interest spell" as you suggest - that's 
pretty cool.  Or the goblins could lend and invest, as has long been a 
standard economic practice in most societies.  It's not clear if they *need* 
to - as you state below about credit, the economic rules are not really that 
clear to our eye - if you could just manufacture whatever you need whenever 
you needed it, none of the wizards would need to work and the Weasley 
familial coffers would not be an issue.  I suspect, again, that JKR has a 
simpler day in mind behind the economic rules - I suspect there isn't much 
personal credit extended nor sought, but that probably major projects, like 
construction or a public building, obtain investors and that returns are 
paid possibly through straightforward earnings (example, shares in a toll 
road) and possibly partially through magical means - but it doesn't seem as 
if there's any real way to magick up a large pile of gold.  The whole 
purpose of credit and investors in a situation like my imaginary magical 
toll road or public pay Floo stations ;-) is to concentrate capital to do 
what one person's means generally can't accomplish alone where the intended 
benefit is public and/or corporate (meaning for more than one here) in 
nature.  Most societies that get beyond pastoral in nature figure out a way 
to do this.

>Why would wizards need credit btw? That would suggest that their economy
>runs by the same sort of rules as ours, which certainly isn't proven.
>
Simple credit is *always* useful for large ticket items - what about 
purchasing a house?  And, as I mentioned above, credit and investment for 
large government or public projects is generally about the only way to go 
for obtaining a concentration of capital necessary to achieve it.  This can 
come through bond ballot initiatives - a forced investment through the form 
of taxes - for mandated government things; but for concerns that are 
elective and designed to pay for themselves or make a profit, a form of 
credit and investment nearly always has to be used or designed.

>The crossover between the Goblins and the muggles does worry me, though. I
>truly can't see the WW allowing muggle bankers to know about the magical
>world. But on the other hand there has to be some way of establishing that
>exchange rate between muggle and wizard money, and something that the
>Goblins can do with the muggle money that they exchange.
>
True enough.

And are Galleons, Sickles and Knuts *Britain's* WW money only, or for the 
whole WW?

>JOdel wrote:
> >That Binns had his 4th years writing weekly essays on goblin rebellions
> >throughout the 18th century is a pretty strong indication that the 
>banking
> >franchise in itself was not enough to satisfy them all. I suspect that 
>the
>goblin
> >"government" disclaimed any responsibility in any of such rebellions with 
>a
>lot of
> >po-faced denunciations about malcontents while doing nothing to quell 
>them.
>
>There's nothing of course to exclude the Goblins being involved in other
>activities than finance. After all, we don't really know anything about how
>their society works or what else they do. The description of the vaults
>under Gringotts suggests that they have considerable abilities in the 
>mining
>and engineering fields so I wonder if they are also the folk you have in to
>do building work?
>
I suspect that, like the warrior class in medieval times who are now 
functionally extinct because times changed and you no longer held your 
property and expanded it by physically fighting with your neighbors, times 
changed for the goblins and their aims changed or the correct means to 
accomplish it changed.  Not to introduce any sort of prejudicial note here, 
but I was a history major - and a note of dispassionate observance often 
echoed by 20th century historians is that the Japanese failed to conquer 
America or even get much of a beachhead here - but they then proceeded to 
make great inroads in the economic arena, and even now Japanese investments 
dominate land ownership in Hawai'i.  It's my guess that times just changed 
for everyone involved.

Felinia

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