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Economist writes against economy of magic in Harry Potter

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  • Economist writes against economy of magic in Harry Potter

    Successful magical worlds depend on basic economic principles, and that's where JK Rowling's Harry Potter falls short.

    Why are books about magic so exciting? The lure is almost tautological: magic is compelling because it allows us to imagine doing the things we cannot ordinarily do. Sure, romance novels may let you envision a world full of hot, sensitive men who want to cosy up to your wounded inner child, and do the dishes afterwards. But only in magic books can you make them disappear and reappear at will.

    But this actually presents a problem for authors. If magic is too powerful then the characters will be omnipotent gods, and there won't be a plot. Magic must have rules and limits in order to leave the author enough room to tell a story. In economic terms, there must be scarcity: magical power must be a finite resource.

    JK Rowling is not, to put it mildly, known for her seamless plotting or the gripping realism of her characters, most of whom spend the latter books pointlessly withholding information from each other that, if shared, would end the installment somewhere around page ten. But for me, there is another problem with the books, one that has kept me from looking forward to the seventh volume as keenly as I might. I am an economics reporter, and the books are chock full of terrible economics.

    There are two ways, I think, that one can present magic: as something that can be done, but only at a price; or as a mysterious force that is poorly understood. So in Orson Scott Card's Hart's Hope, women who perform magic must pay the price in blood, their own or that of others.

    Those prices provide the scarcity needed to drive the plot forward. In the Narnia books and the Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, magical power has no obvious cost. But we don't need to understand the costs of magic, because the main characters can't perform it. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with having a deus ex machina in a story; your average fiction writer does not need to explain the operation of the law of gravity, or provide a back story for running out of gas at an (in)convenient moment.

    But there have to be generally accepted rules. Characters can't get out of the predicament the author is sick of by having the car suddenly start running on sand. Similarly, if your characters will be using magic, they must do so by some generally believable system.

    Yet in the Potter books, the costs and limits are too often arbitrary.
    A patronus charm, for example, is awfully difficult - until Rowling wants a stirring scene in which Harry pulls together an intrepid band of students to Fight the Power, whereupon it becomes simple enough to be taught by an inexperienced fifteen year old. Rowling can only do this because it's thoroughly unclear how magic power is acquired. It seems hard to credit academic labour, when spells are one or two words; and anyway, if that were the determinant, Hermione Granger would be a better wizard than Harry. But if it's something akin to athletic skill, why is it taught at rows of desks? And why aren't students worn out after practicing spells?

    The low opportunity cost attached to magic spills over into the thoroughly unbelievable wizard economy. Why are the Weasleys poor? Why would any wizard be? Anything they need, except scarce magical objects, can be obtained by ordering a house elf to do it, or casting a spell, or, in a pinch, making objects like dinner, or a house, assemble themselves. Yet the Weasleys are poor not just by wizard standards, but by ours: they lack things like new clothes and textbooks that should be easily obtainable with a few magic words. Why?

    The answer, as with so much of JK Rowling's work, seems to be "she didn't think it through". The details are the great charm of Rowling's books, and the reason that I have pre-ordered my copy of the seventh novel: the owl grams, the talking portraits, the Weasley twins' magic tricks. But she seems to pay no attention at all to the big picture, so all the details clash madly with each other. It's the same reason she writes herself into plot holes that have to be resolved by making characters behave in inexplicable ways.

    This matters. If the cost of magic isn't well defined, how do we know what resources, other than plucky determination, Harry needs to defeat Voldemort? We certainly can't rely on his mental acumen; he's spent the last two books acting like a brain-damaged refugee from The Dirty Dozen.

    Perhaps, as some friends have argued, I am expecting too much from a children's book. But I don't think that is right. Children are great systemisers, which is why they watch the same shows and read the same books over and over again: they are trying to put all the details together into a coherent picture. "I could do things no one else could do!" is a great thrill; but so is "I know how this works". You can't say that about Harry Potter, because Rowling doesn't seem to know herself. To the extent that there is any system at all, it is the meanest sort of Victoriana, the fantasy world of a child Herbert Spencer. There is a hereditary aristocracy of talent, and I am secretly at its apex. There is an elite school almost nobody can go to, and I am one of the chosen. People fall quite neatly into the categories of good, bad, or clueless, we are the good ones who get to run things in the end. That's powerful fantasy stuff, which is why it's so common.

    But the best children's fantasy does something else: it gives one the illusion that the magical world is as consistent and real as one's own world - that it exists, just barely out of reach. Even at eight, or 11, I could not have believed that of Harry Potter. The arbitrary ham fist of Ms Rowling is everywhere too evident - changing the rules, and then making the characters tap dance, like marionettes, to distract you from the enormous potholes in the plot.

    I am prepared to be charmed by the seventh book. But oh, how I wish it were convincing enough to consume my imagination as Narnia and Middle Earth once did.




    Latest opinion, analysis and discussion from the Guardian. CP Scott: "Comment is free, but facts are sacred"






    I think I would hit it btw
    I need a foot massage

  • #2
    Re: Economist writes against economy of magic in Harry Potter

    Originally posted by Barnabas
    Successful magical worlds depend on basic economic principles, and that's where JK Rowling's Harry Potter falls short.
    This objection is as obvious as it is stupid

    Comment


    • #3
      Yay! Now the the final book is out, so many senior theses can be completed.
      “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
      "Capitalism ho!"

      Comment


      • #4
        Are no threads safe from your anti-China vitriol?
        THEY!!111 OMG WTF LOL LET DA NOMADS AND TEH S3D3NTARY PEOPLA BOTH MAEK BITER AXP3REINCES
        AND TEH GRAAT SINS OF THERE [DOCTRINAL] INOVATIONS BQU3ATH3D SMAL
        AND!!1!11!!! LOL JUST IN CAES A DISPUTANT CALS U 2 DISPUT3 ABOUT THEYRE CLAMES
        DO NOT THAN DISPUT3 ON THEM 3XCAPT BY WAY OF AN 3XTARNAL DISPUTA!!!!11!! WTF

        Comment


        • #5
          None!
          “As a lifelong member of the Columbia Business School community, I adhere to the principles of truth, integrity, and respect. I will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”
          "Capitalism ho!"

          Comment


          • #6
            burn
            meet the new boss, same as the old boss

            Comment


            • #7
              That was pretty dumb. It fails to understand the key basis to HP magic: control. In HP, magical ability stems from both personal power resources (eg, HP has more than Hermione), and control over ones magic (Hermione has more than HP in the early books, and thus is more powerful early on).

              Control is learned at desks (to some extent), and does not wear one out to practice it (although it can get boring of course). Furthermore, it is possible to practice it without an experienced teacher [although it is better taught by such].

              The 'economy of magic' in HP comes from the muggle world interaction. There is no 'economy' until one returns to the muggle world, at which point it is basically the MoM's restriction on using magic around muggles [don't] that limits it. There is no 'scarcity' of magic, other than any given character's ability.

              Dumb article by someone who understands this world poorly [and I understand it only very limitedly, but even I clearly see the failures here]. An Economist trying to fit everything into an economist's toolset (and self-admittedly so, at the top). Round peg in square hole and all that.
              <Reverend> IRC is just multiplayer notepad.
              I like your SNOOPY POSTER! - While you Wait quote.

              Comment


              • #8
                magical books obviously cost real wizard money

                clothes shouldn't, and Rowling probably just included them as such to make a point about the Weisley's (which wouldn't be as easy to observe by other means, in a wizard house hold)

                also, the poor wizard is pretty common idea in literature

                basically, wizards are mostly fairly aristocratic... and the money is only made and useful for buying stuff from Muggles (Rare) or buying important things that can't be created from thin air (magical things and the like)

                JM
                Jon Miller-
                I AM.CANADIAN
                GENERATION 35: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social experiment.

                Comment


                • #9
                  the money is only made and useful for buying stuff from Muggles (Rare) or buying important things that can't be created from thin air (magical things and the like)


                  Or food. Remember its one of the five things that can't be magically created (I wonder what that other four are... perhaps clothing is one of them).

                  Referencing the final book, the official phrasing is "Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration".
                  “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                  - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

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                  • #10
                    Leave it to an economist to spoil the fun even out of Harry Potter...

                    No wonder we have such bad reps.
                    A true ally stabs you in the front.

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                    • #11
                      Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, magical power has no obvious cost.
                      Has this person never read the Lord of the Rings? The price of magical power in LOTR is your human existence.

                      Why is she complaining anyway? The Harry Potter books are simply the modern version of public school stories like Billy Bunter. George Orwell has an excellent essay on the sociological implications of those. HP is a deeply reactionary series of books, and we know how reactionary the Economist is.
                      Only feebs vote.

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                      • #12
                        You're right that the HP series draws a lot from the nearly extinct British boarding school genre, although I'd not call them modern versions, because the very idea of boarding school is dying out. To average reader of HP (94% do not live in the UK), the boarding school aspects are as fantastic as wands and potions.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Sandman
                          You're right that the HP series draws a lot from the nearly extinct British boarding school genre, although I'd not call them modern versions, because the very idea of boarding school is dying out. To average reader of HP (94% do not live in the UK), the boarding school aspects are as fantastic as wands and potions.
                          The class feeling in them is very strong. I guess I tend to notice this, since I was given a lot of old kids books (many from the 30s, 40s and 50s) when I was a kid, and they were full of school stories. I still get a laugh out of Billy Bunter.
                          Only feebs vote.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            I actually muchly agree.

                            There is a certain genre of fantasy which I've never been able to stand, where magic is just magic and has no rules.

                            I always enjoy fantasy more where magic power comes with a terrible cost, or at least where there's reasonably well defined rules.

                            The problem with magic without a cost is, suspension of disbelief. It basically leads to contrived plots, where author just decides on a whim whether or not to have the character magic their way out of a problem, the problem is this damages suspense and makes it less "real". It also typically becomes just plain silly ("You can magic that away! Why don't you?!!!").

                            Ideally I like for a magic system to obey at least the laws of thermodynamics - that is casting spells should "consume" energy so it is finite and takes a toll on the casters, and that things should not just "poof" into being, the use of magic should be very much tied to the availability of resources in the environment. It's not a strict requirement for my enjoyability though - but SOME constraints are useful.

                            Note that the article is really talking about scarcity in more general terms than traditional economics, magic needs to be scarce in the fictional universe in some defined way, rather than just avoiding exceeding the "Dues ex machina" quota for a given plot. Some works of fantasy do this better than others, some much better, even if very few actually fail completely.

                            Ultimately I think that any fantasy is weak, if there is ever a situation where a character could just magic a problem away (based on past uses of magic in the fiction), and yet doesn't. It generally results in characters which look like total idiots with very little awareness (of course stupidity could be the price for magical powers ).

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Harry Potter is pretty good about that...

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