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Why, oh why, don't the Weasleys "conjure" up some diamonds/gold/etc, sell 'em to Muggles, and get rich? They could buy a mansion (like the Malfoys), and live there happily ever after.

I know there's Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfiguration that prohibits one from conjuring food (which doesn't make much sense to me, either). Even if it applied to gold, what about all the other elements/compounds/materials? Could the law really be 'don't let a wizard conjure something if it'll make them richer'? That's totally nonsensical.

Why does Wizard society still have poor people, especially if they're talented?

PearsonArtPhoto
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Mateen Ulhaq
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    Surely the same reason as the muggle world has poor people who are talented. Not all talent is equally well rewarded. The Weasleys talents were not the best rewarded ones in any world. – Schroedingers Cat Feb 19 '12 at 17:31
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    Why does one need money period when they can conjure/duplicate all of life's essentials? Money does NOT equal wealth. – Mojo Feb 19 '12 at 15:08
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    "Reparo" seems like a great business model too. If a pre-first year can fix glasses with a wave of a wand, a 7th year muggleborn could do do very well in antiques. – Dave X Jan 17 '17 at 16:19

13 Answers13

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Keep in mind there are two types of monetary wealth in the HP world.

Muggle wealth is the money that we are all familiar with, and can only be used to purchase goods and services from Muggles.

Wizarding money is used to purchase goods and services from Wizard society.

For the most part, there's very little that members of Wizard society want or need from Muggles. Property, housing, and food really seem to be about the extent of it for the vast majority of Wizard families. Most families already have established properties and houses, and using magic would, in most cases, make expanding or modifying houses much easier. Which leaves food, for those families who don't already grow or raise their own. However, food can most likely also be obtained from other members of Wizard society (in a market as crowded as Diagon Alley there's almost certainly some grocers, and as further evidence many wizards are so unused to Muggle society that they are incapable of fitting in for even short trips, which implies that they are not making regular trips to the supermarket for food). Add to this mix the convenience of traveling to Wizardly destinations via Floo network, and it seems that the need to purchase from Muggles is a relatively rare occurrence.

Even if a Wizard or Witch did want something from the Muggles, and conjured up gold, or jewels, they'd have to find some way to convert them into Muggle currency. Selling a small fortune in valuable merchandise is not a quick and easy process if you attempt to do it legally, especially if you are shabbily or even oddly dressed, and seem completely unfamiliar with the relative value of currency.

In short, it is no doubt possible for a Wizard to get very rich in Muggle currency, but it is not necessarily easy, convenient, or altogether useful to do so.

As for Wizarding money, it is almost certain that it cannot simply be summoned or transmuted. The whole point of currency is to act as a convenient marker for goods or services that have value and are worth exchanging for goods or services of similar value. In order for currency to be a convenient marker, everyone using it must agree to its relative value, and agree to keep that relative value stable. I think it can be assumed that there are checks and balances in place to insure that magical forgery of the currency is difficult, if not impossible, and that anyone caught doing so would be severely disciplined.

If conjuring gold, or transmuting glass into diamonds, or some other means of conjuring "wealth" would be possible, then those materials simply would not be valuable to Wizards. Why would one wizard buy or trade for diamonds that another wizard conjured or transformed, when they could almost certainly do the same themselves?

Beofett
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    Let's say a Muggle-born wizard who knows the ways of the Muggle world were to create platinum and sell it to Muggles (under the disguise of a 'mining company' or appearing as a very rich person), they could gain significant amounts of money, and through care, remain unnoticed. Then, they could use the money to buy Muggle-Wizard items (food, etc) in relatively unlimited quantities. This would relieve them of part of their financial woes, and their Wizarding financial position might improve significantly over time. They may even become the next Malfoys, if they're good businesswizards. – Mateen Ulhaq Jun 06 '12 at 01:22
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    Hermione converts her Muggle money to Gringotts gold (in PoA if I recall), however, meaning that Muggle money CAN be converted –  Dec 02 '14 at 20:29
  • perhaps that is an accommodation reserved only for muggle-born Hogwarts students @eliyahu-g – NKCampbell Jun 17 '16 at 21:13
  • Or mine some Bitcoin with a tap of a wand on the computer and buy your legit muggle gold that way. Forgeries not needed. – iMerchant Jun 17 '16 at 22:54
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    @MateenUlhaq What you're describing would probably be the wizard equivalent of a criminal enterprise, because you'd almost certainly be breaking wizard laws; you're selling something wizard-made (and essentially counterfeit) to Muggles in exchange for Muggle money, converting the Muggle money to wizard money (turning "bad" money into "good"), and using it on wizard goods/services. In the real world, that's called money laundering and people do get rich that way-- until they're caught. – PlutoThePlanet Apr 19 '17 at 18:00
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Because wizards creating money would produce a huge inflationary process in the Muggle society. So probably the Ministry of Magic would ban selling any magically created objects to Muggles under the pain of Azkaban. They have the Improper Use of Magic Office and Aurors, remember? Messing with them is thus a bad idea, unless you are an evil all-powerful overlord.

As for intra-wizard trade, any merchant that does not want to go broke would probably have means of detecting forgeries, just as in our Muggle world they do :)

Kevin
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StasM
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    I know this is the highest up-voted answer, but IMHO it makes no sense at all. There are VERY few wizards, so the "inflationary pressure" would be miniscule. See http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/3354/during-the-events-of-the-harry-potter-series-what-is-the-total-population-of-wiza – DVK-on-Ahch-To May 09 '11 at 18:44
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    @DVK: not if they would generate huge amounts of money each. And anyway, Ministry of Magic's modus operandi seems to suggest anything that can be considered as mixing the worlds or turning undue attention to wizards would be prohibited. Having somebody that has no apparent source of income but generates huge amounts of money out of the thin air would certainly be a problem for them. – StasM May 10 '11 at 00:39
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    Malfoys seem to be on the equivalent of millionaires. Most of it OLD money, not current income. So, say we have 1mm yearly new income for them. UK GDP in 2000 was $1.4 TRILLION. If all of regular non-high-end wizards go for, say, $100k gold sold a year/family, and you have 10000 of them in the UK (with average of 4 ppl /family), you get an extra 2500100k=$250MM extra. In 1.4 TRILLION economy that's not even noticeable as far as inflationary pressure, though if they all specifically sell REAL* (not leprechaun) gold, the price of gold goes down. – DVK-on-Ahch-To May 10 '11 at 02:39
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    I wouldn't say it would be negligible. Musa 1 of Mali went on pilgrimage to Mecca and spent so much on route he basically bankrupted 3 cities because his influx of money devalued gold. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musa_I_of_Mali –  Jan 24 '16 at 19:13
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Magical gold comes up at the World Quidditch Tournament where the Irish leprechaun mascot throw it out to the crowd - it disappears by the next morning. This seems to be a common thing with magically created items (not the same as items that are enchanted) - they are transitory.

Also, there are wizarding laws about showing magic to muggles, which a family like the Weasley's are going to follow, even to their disadvantage.

HorusKol
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  • How about the rest of the wizarding world that doesn't work at the Ministry? They just need to trade the gold for money (or something similar), and devise a system in which the Muggles won't be looking at the gold when it disappears. – Mateen Ulhaq May 08 '11 at 23:43
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    Good question - and looking at the richer families of the wizarding world, they mostly seem to be the most likely to be bad, too (the Malfoys, the Blacks [not Sirius], etc) - so maybe they are using ill-gotten gains... – HorusKol May 09 '11 at 08:05
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I'm going to put several answers together, and add in a bit of own bit.

First of all, here's a few facts.

  1. If money was easy to come by, no one would work at all. Thus, money would become worthless.
  2. The wizards don't want to do anything to mess up the muggle world.
  3. It doesn't look like anything is ever really created, but rather, summoned from other locations.

Given these, it seems likely that there must be some laws protecting the money system, some that even the worst wizard will have to follow. Of course, we don't have positive proof that any such law exists, except that there are rich wizards, poor wizards, and magical gold disappears. The following bit I'm going to put in what I would do if I were in charge, and hope that the wizarding world has implemented a few of these things.

  1. Wizard gold much have something done to it to ensure its authenticity.
  2. There must be a spell similar to the decree against under age magic that prevents one from summoning gold, period.
  3. Any creation of gold is similarly temporary.

I would also argue that wizards in general ARE richer than muggles. With the exception of the Weasleys, we don't see any poor wizards, and we do see several rich wizards. I don't know how this plays into things, but...

PearsonArtPhoto
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  • is true (Goblins administer at least the UK monetary system, and have their own means of ensuring authenticity), 2. is probably false, 3. might be true.
    • – Adamant Jan 07 '17 at 05:55