“rationalism” is the choice religion of 87 IQ brainlets who think they’re geniuses for being able to read Voltaire.
Comment on EVERYBODY IS DOING SOMETHING
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 3 weeks agoPeople are always praising that fanfic for some reason so I tried reading it a while back. If it’s the one I’m thinking of then hard disagree, the protagonist is a self-insert Mary Sue clearly written by a kid who thinks they’re the smartest person alive. One part that still sticks in my mind years later is their fundamental misunderstanding of how fiat currency works, it was some ridiculous get-rich-quick scheme like melting down wizard currency into pure gold to sell to non-wizard community then using that money to buy silver which they’d trade up to magic society gold coins. It was some years ago so I may be misremembering the details, but there should be a ton of issues that immediately jump out to you there.
I trudged through and got as far as the first meeting with Malfoy where the author realized they were being too friendly with each other, but since Malfoy is supposed to be a bad guy they decided he should randomly blurt out something about how he wants to rape some girl.
Maybe it’s just because I don’t have the context of other bad fanfics, but that’s a solid 0/10 from me.
chocosoldier@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
The get rich quick scheme I thought was well thought out, for the ‘in universe’ principles that had been laid out. One galleon converted to a lot of copper, so the mary sue could take gold from the muggle world, get it made into galleons in the wizard world, trade those for a metric shit ton of copper knuts, and then take those to the muggle world to be sold for a much larger sum of money than had been used to buy the gold.
As long as you don’t expect it to work forever, it would be fine. The writing was terrible, but the character established all the nuts and bolts of the operation by ‘just asking’ questions to the diagetic narrator: pure gold was able to be made into galleons for a fee, banks would give you your money in knuts if you asked, and the prices would work for it.
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
If the coins are 100% gold or copper then you’re in one of two scenarios: the value of the coin is the scrap metal value, in which case swapping between gold and copper makes little difference; or, the mint buys your scrap gold and converts it in-house, pocketing the difference. A mint has no reason to convert your gold to significantly higher value coins for you, that only loses them their economic and political power in the form of currency control.
The only way it would work is if you specifically build a world where everyone else is incredibly stupid just to make yourself seem smart.
agamemnonymous@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
The whole basis of that scheme was the different relative exchange rates in the muggle and wizard world. There are I think 17 silver sickles to 1 gold galleon, but I’m the muggle world gold is more like 50 times the value of silver. The plan was to take a galleon to the muggle world, melt them down and sell the gold, use the proceeds to buy silver, bring that silver back to the wizard world and have it minted into 50 sickles, and trade those sickles for about 3 galleons.
Like many scenes in HPMOR the author is mostly just roasting Rowling for lazy world building. He didn’t have to build a world where everyone else was stupid, the point is that Rowling’s wizarding world already fulfilled that requirement.
my_hat_stinks@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Exploiting the difference in value of a commodity between communities is a valid way to make a living, traders have existed for a very long time, though if there’s little effort required the values will quickly align with each other. Turning it into an infinite money glitch by having a mint convert your raw material into coins is nonsense.
That’s all still assuming the coins are made of pure gold/silver for some reason. And assuming the mint is willing to just make money for you in spite what I’ve already said.
superb@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
This kinda shit happens in the real world between real currencies
Natanael@infosec.pub 3 weeks ago
That’s just arbitrage
juliebean@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
regarding your edit, it was hardly a perfect solution. he just bit his lip real hard. that was his message to himself. i think it’s mentioned a few paragraphs before he tells mcgonnagall about it. it is in there, but it is easy to miss on the first read through, to be sure.