The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
How do Wizards make a living?
SintraEdrien:
One thing to note is that the "interference with technology" is just the current manifestation of the unpleasant side-effect of being a wizard. Per WoJ, before technology developed, that side-effect manifested differently, but still in ways that were inconvenient for the wizard and unpleasant for by-standers, and is a direct back-lash of "reality" against being warped or otherwise messed-with by wizards exercising their powers, and that back-lash has (again, per WoJ) been part of the price of *being* a wizard in this earthly reality- it's been a constant since the beginning.
g33k:
I'm coming to the conclusion that a bunch of these practical issues are much more Doylist than not.
If you WANT it to be easy, it's easy to justify. If you want it to be hard, it's easy to make it hard.
KurtinStGeorge:
--- Quote from: dspringer1 on October 25, 2019, 08:34:55 PM ---I think the benefit of compound interest can be seriously oversold - at least as soemthing that provides real benefit to most wizards.
It requires several elements to be successful and all are problematic for wizards.
1) The person must first have wealth before they can invest wealth. Few people have the personality to sock away substantial resources today, so I cannot imagine the wizard population is filled with a hoard of atypical savers. So a poor or even middle class wizard is not going to be able to save enough money to create a small fortune through compound interest.
2) You must have something to invest "in". Stock or bond markets really did not exist before the 1600s and before that investments were typically limited to business you were actively enraged in or in land ownership. Hands on ownership was the norm really until the mid-late 1800s. So opportunities for absentee investments were pretty limited and few wizards would get rich on hands on small businesses.
3) Investing wisely requires real skill. You are most successful when you understand the business and change your business strategy as the world changes. Few wizards would spend the significant amount of time required to understand the market -- and spend even more time each year to keep that understanding current. Add into this the fact that most wealth creation came from technology -- and wizards are horrible with technology. They are also unlikely to spot new trends in technology or recognize when a previously successful technology is no longer the wise investment.
Keep in mind we had multiple very serious recessions, major technology shifts, and other disruptions that could easily have destroyed all a wizard's investments if not managed correctly. And while it is true the wizard could have invested in very safe government bonds, the reality is that few government bonds were really safe prior to the 20th century (exception - Bank of England) and I am sure WWII also contributed to a lot of bad debt. Even if your bonds paid off, the safe ones rarely earned much after accounting for inflation. Such investments protected your fortune, they rarely "made" your fortune.
4) The wizard is not alone in using magic or investing in the long term. There are many supernatural races who are both long lived, have access to magic, perhaps have some ability to see the future, and would choose to invest. The White Council's own investments are a perfect example. What this means is that the wizard cannot rely upon magic to provide a major advantage, at least once investments become substantial. There is just too much competition who can play the same game.
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I like all of the points that you made, but I think you also have to consider the culture any given wizard came up with. Harry received some kind of public education, which would have taught him virtually nothing about how to handle money. When I was a senior in my high school, I took a class (I no longer remember if it was history or social studies) where the teacher finished the curriculum a week early. The last week of school he taught us how to balance a check book and how mortgages worked. Outside of learning math and how to punctuate; which I really didn't learn that well, it was probably the only useful thing I learned in any high school class I took. There should have been a year's worth of classes on personal finance and investments, in general.
Now older wizards like Ebenezer and the Merlin wouldn't have received any education unless they came from wealth. This would be especially true if their magical potential wasn't known. They also would have been born into a much harsher world. Those who survived would have been forced to learn how to survive in that world. Imagine a three hundred year old wizard who learned how business and finance worked in the eighteenth century, and who has seen every financial panic and full blown economic depression from then until now. Talk about learning the hard way. Now imagine that the White Council has several people like that working as financial advisers. I think they would be really, really good at their job.
toodeep:
I wonder if we might be overthinking the difficult crime thing with major bank invasions and stuff. Why not just enchant an item that makes every one dollar bill you hand someone look like a 20 for two minutes after it leaves your hand, or something else reasonably "magically automated" to deceive people. Counterfeiting without magic might be too much work and too difficult with all the countermeasures, but with magic might be easy.
If you were ok with the morality of it and you could also do something like smuggle drugs using the NN. being able to go from somewhere central America to Chicago in half an hour with no border checks should make it easy to earn a bunch of money fast. If you want to go legit, just transport things back and forth to from Europe or America to Australia. There has got to be a way to make money physically transporting something in half an hour that would normally take days.
Kindler:
--- Quote from: KurtinStGeorge on November 03, 2019, 10:26:16 PM ---I like all of the points that you made, but I think you also have to consider the culture any given wizard came up with. Harry received some kind of public education, which would have taught him virtually nothing about how to handle money. When I was a senior in my high school, I took a class (I no longer remember if it was history or social studies) where the teacher finished the curriculum a week early. The last week of school he taught us how to balance a check book and how mortgages worked. Outside of learning math and how to punctuate; which I really didn't learn that well, it was probably the only useful thing I learned in any high school class I took. There should have been a year's worth of classes on personal finance and investments, in general.
Now older wizards like Ebenezer and the Merlin wouldn't have received any education unless they came from wealth. This would be especially true if their magical potential wasn't known. They also would have been born into a much harsher world. Those who survived would have been forced to learn how to survive in that world. Imagine a three hundred year old wizard who learned how business and finance worked in the eighteenth century, and who has seen every financial panic and full blown economic depression from then until now. Talk about learning the hard way. Now imagine that the White Council has several people like that working as financial advisers. I think they would be really, really good at their job.
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They teach that stuff here in New York in some districts. In mine, it was a required course, and there was a regents exam for it (meaning you have to retake the exam or the course if you fail). It focused on things like making and maintaining a budget, balancing a checkbook, filing taxes (and how taxes work in general), the differences between 1099s and W-2s/W-4s, how to apply for a job and the interview progress (like writing a resume or CV, how you're supposed to dress appropriately, etc.) the hierarchy of needs, and even things like how to study for an exam. It's a full-year course, too. Highly practical education. I think it's still a requirement in my old district. It fell under the business course credits. I remember it was one of two regents exams I got a perfect 100 on (it's not exactly rocket science, and I don't think anyone in my year (massive high school, I graduated with 1800 kids) failed it, but still).
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