Figuring out the WW (was Four More Ways to Predict)

[Jim Ferer]

No: HPFGUIDX 96741

Steve: "All my favorite discussion in this group are based on logical
expansions of the wizard world. Taking what we see on the page and
expanding that through logical and reasonable assumption in order to
flesh out the world that is not shown on the page."

These discussions are my favorites, too, and when I get into them, I
want to play scientist, exploring and figuring out the wizard world in
the most accurate way possible.  I want to come to conclusions that,
if JKR heard them, she would approve of.  I want to know stuff about
the world JKR doesn't know.  I want to walk around in it, have an ice
cream at Fortescue's, read /Transfiguration Today/, and know just how
many students there are at Hogwarts. <g>  Believability is everything
to me.

For this, anything can be a tool. Sociology, macroeconomics,
philosophy, anything can shine some kind of light on wizard society,
because the wizard world is a human society. The wizard world is not
alien just because they use magic.

I remember the discussion of the economics of the wizard world very
well. The point there was there couldn't be as few in wizard society
as the supposed number of students at Hogwarts suggested, because you
couldn't have the society and economics we've seen if the wizard
population of the UK and Ireland was only about 6,000, which was the
number we came up with.

There's so much we do not know.  What doest the WW have for a tax
system?  Goodness knows they have a massive bureaucracy.  How much
interaction is there between the Muggle economy and the wizard one? 
What's a wizard wedding like? (besides Uncle Finster getting a load on
and sleeping under his table, I mean)  How do wizard families care for
their babies? (I postulated that wizard parents still change their
babies by hand because it strengthens the bond between baby and
parent) I want to know all that stuff.

Jim Ferer