You know, I was about to reply to a few of the actual on-topic posts, but I find the enjoyable aspect of this discussion's gone. We've degraded (and I am including myself in this to some degree) to nothing but a national pride thread. I suppose this is just another example of why you can't discuss religion or politics in groups.

 

And yet, your rebuttal only manages to fuel someone like Mordecai's argument.

I am not Anti-American, nor am I European, so this can be considered a fairly un-biased viewpoint.

The Brain Damage Phenomena: More then 80% of statistics are made up, you can't hope to properly gauge that statistic, and say it's true, Americans still complain that foreigners come and take their jobs.

Saying America is best, we have everything, fuck you world, is probably what spawns people like Mordecai, that like to bash America at every chance, and even seem to try and just find reasons to bash America.

 

Alright, check this out, people: I think that you are all idjits! You're comparing apples to oranges. America and Britain both have their pros and cons, but they have very little relevance to each other.

Britain, as has been said, is a very old country, one of the oldest, and it is therefore steeped in its ways, traditions, and heritage, which is both a good thing and a bad thing depending on how one looks at it. On the one hand, it doesn't leave much room for branching out. Magical Britain is very rigid in its methods, using only an approved method of casting magic. On the flip side, they are very good at it. A British wizard could be called an expert in his type of magic.

America, however, is widely referred to as a 'melting pot,' meaning that there are a wide myriad of cultures residing here. (Yes, I said here, because I'm American. Cue rabid flame attack for taking a side. Anyway...) It can therefore be concluded that different cultures bring different brands of magic. With this in mind, if a British wizard is an expert in his field, an American wizard would be more like a Jack-of-all-trades, versed in and capable of several types of magic but not exactly a revolutionary theorist in a single field. Again, this is both a good thing and a bad thing.

The point is this: America and Britain are too different to be compared. I can come up with a thousand different things that either culture can do better than the other. It's like me telling my brother I play guitar better than he plays baseball.

 

An argument that needs to be made here, is that you cannot compare magical and muggle societies. Yes the muggle world is more technologically advanced, yes they have computers, and the Internet, and electricity - but they need it. The magical world has nowhere near the population of its' muggle counterpart. Sure it would make it much easier for Wizards to use the Internet to compare cauldron prices, it's convenient! But when we have one cauldron shop in Diagon Alley, another in Hogsmeade, and possibly another in Knockturn Alley, it really is a waste of resources to develop something like a computer, or the Internet just to compare prices at three stores. The wizards have nothing like it, because they don't need it. Why would your average wizard want to know about immigration statistics? We know that wizards have quite a low population compared to muggles, they don't need the infrastructure that muggles have been forced to create.

Sure in the Muggle world there are thousands upon thousands of shops selling the same things, but when you consider the population difference, everyone holding to the idea that Wizarding Society is inferior to Muggle Society isn't thinking about it logically.

 

No, it fuels his bias. We are discussing why people would want to move to America. Higher quality of life is a pretty big reason to move. It is the raison d'etre for the Brain Drain phenomena.

As does every other nationality. Especially the Europeans. This is the American standard though: we don't mind foreigners in the fields requiring a higher education. We mind foreigners coming in for the low wage jobs, this little break down of yours creates a false comparison when in fact the skill sets (skilled vs. unskilled, higher education vs. no education) are quite different.

As for the statistical stuff, I frequently bitch about them, but only when they deal with very specific things. These are abstract enough to work out. The UN uses them when assessing countries levels of development.

We are discussing standards of living. Mordecai is proving himself incapable looking past his hatred of America to view the situation through any sort of internationally accepted lense. As for my attitude of "fuck you world", if I came off that way, it was not my intent. I am merely stating the reasons why there is a mass movement of people coming into America. To use a slightly different example: you're a millionaire -- are you going to live in (a) the ghetto or (b) in a McMansion in the suburbs? If you picked A then you're either a rapper or a retard, possibly both (as many rappers have proven the words synonymous).

EDIT in response to NamesAreUnimportant: Comparisons on subjective levels are impossible because they are in fact subjective. Hence the reason why we use objective standards for comparison like GDP, Ecological Footprint, etc.

EDIT 2: Once again, this debate is about standard of living, not morality. If you want to debate the morality/immorality of America's strength start a different thread.

 

I feel the need to steer this thread back on topic, so I'm going to answer some of the points raised.

Before that happens, Muggles must find out about wizards. To do that, the wizarding world must reveal themselves or the Muggles discover their existence- which is unlikely, because wizards can hide and even if they are discovered, there's a neat little spell called Obliviate.

1. First, it must be found.
2. The Ministry will realize Hogwarts was attacked, and tell the public. Also, people in Hogsmeade could pass the news on.
3. Ministry will be in a panic, desperate to try and find a solution. If something is blown to hell you do not blame someone else. It'd be like the Nazi's blaming the penguins they lost WWII.
4. I can't refute that.
5. Fear, the most powerful motivator I know. Even if they do scoff, they will still try and find wards to stop happening.
6. As I said, fear. Purebloods won't give a damn who it was that bombed Hogwarts. They'll want to be safe from whoever did it.
7. Repeat no.6
8. Can't refute that.
9. Or that
10. That's likely, but why the hell would the terrified public care?
11. Repeat no.1

Also, by the time the abilty to manipulate energy is doscovered, those wards would be obselete and wizards/witches have discovered better and improved wards. And plus, why the hell would muggles bomb people who have supernatural powers? Fear is a powerful motivator, as i've said, but we won't go up against we know we have no chance to defeat!

And I have to say Rainstorm, well put.

Also, Kender- I wouldn't say it's degraded into a National Pride thread. After, some points are still coming up that ,to me, aren't degrading other countries whilst buffing up the own.

 

But what do you mean by a "Higher quality of life". It can differ a lot from country to country. A friend of mine from my University is an American but he moved here ~4 years ago because he had a girlfriend who didn’t want to move.

We had a similar discussion. Whats the deferens between US and Sweden? From his perspective, he said:

"If you want to earn a lot of money and make a good career, you want to live in US. If you have children and a family you want to live in Sweden."

So depending on who you ask you will get a different answer when you ask what a "Higher quality of life" is. It all depends on where you are in life. I will get a higher degree of education so US might be more suited for me.



I don't see why any magical country would be affected by the brain drain phenomena. Most new inventions will probably be spells... and not new physical things. The spells will be published in books and they will be sold around the world.

Most of my University books are in English anyway. And when it's only about new incantations and how to wave your wand. The public won't suffer too much if some people move out of the country.

If there is a magical America it will probably be located in your 51 state.

I think most magical communities have stagnated. Most things can be fixed by using your wand. There isn’t any need for new things.

​

And how long have we had Internet and mobile phones. 10 to 12 years. But when you can apparate to your friend’s house instead of driving over an hour you don’t need a telephone or the internet. ​

 

Zev, odds are he used non-standard value judgements for it (i.e. girlfriend unwilling to move, family etc). The point of my post was to demonstrate why the US has a net influx of intelligent people. As for the brain drain phenomena, it is the effect of the root causes outlined above.

As for your speculation about informational diffusion, I doubt it would work that way. All our canonical evidence for International mixing comes from the GOF, and with the exception of a few characters, it is reluctant mixing. Therefore, I find it unlikely that information will be shared.

 

True. I was just saying material wealth for a wizard that can transfigure most things shouldn’t be that important. But humans are a weakminded species so sure. They go were the gold is.​

I gather from the size of the wizarding Britain(~10 000 people) and how many books are the the library.

​

And the population has increased over time sense the last 1000 years. I think it unlikely so few wizard could have written so many books.

So I concluded they must have quite good information diffusion between countries.

 

To refute this, Obliviate will work on a single target at a time. I'm going to assume that there are only a dozen or two people that have a job exclusively to Obliviate muggles. It also does not effect cameras, unless directly targeted against them, which would disrupt them, but it wouldn't delete the video/audio feed, which may or may not be saved somewhere else. Also, if there are multiple attacks in say 5-6 places, and there are more than 3-4 people in each place that survived, I'm going to assume that at-least one person is going to run away before being Obliviated, and considering that the DE's would be killing muggles basically indiscriminately at will, a lot of people are going to figure out something wrong is going on.
In this situation, hundreds of people have been dying mysteriously, so I'm going to assume that they (meaning average muggles) would start putting up security systems and things like that, so a Death Eater group attacks a well-defended home.
They apparate onto the property and set off a flood light, which wakes up the residents, who would look out the window, see a bunch of Death Eaters, then call the police, who would probably be on high alert, and would come there asap. By the time the police would be on their way, the DE'ers would've gotten to the front door and obliterated it, then proceeded into the house.

First, the topic of bullet-proof shields, as this is a particularly big deal when it comes to muggle/wizard combat. Now, let's say they're using a Franchi SPAS-12, 12 gauge shotgun with LG Buckshot and a Full choke at a range of 10 meters. Now, this'll be firing 6 pieces of lead/*insert bullet material* at about 500meters/second. At 10 meters of range all 6 will hit. Altogether this is approx. 24 Kilograms of force. Now, he can fire off all 9 of his rounds in 2-3 seconds. Thats 216 Kilograms of force spread out over maybe 80-90 cm. Now, depending on how much force you think a shield would have, a DE getting hit by this may or may not be killed, but I think he would at the least be thrown backwards.
(You can convert kg into lb's by multiplying by approx 2.2)

Back to what I was talking about before. Let's say that this particular DE group has 5 people, 4 newbies/slightly experienced, with a pro leading them. The guy defending his house sees his door blown to smithereens, he proceeds to fire all of his ammo out the doorway. A lot of things can factor into this, but chances are that the DE's won't think that he's a threat, if this is early on in the war (and he catches the DE's off guard), this guy could kill off at-least 2 DE's, probably 3-4, maybe all 5. All depending on if he's paranoid enough to have his shotgun loaded and on hand. On the other hand, if the pro casts one of these uber bullet-proof shields, then he'd just fly backwards into the group of DE's behind him and knock them all sprawling (this assuming that the shield is actually attached to the person casting it), giving the muggle a chance to retreat and reload (or rush them and die a horribly painful death), this would allow more time for police to arrive (and the rest of the family to run away).
If that type of thing happened enough, then the muggle Minister, who knows about the Wizarding World, may stop believing that the MoM has things under control, and start directly fighting back.

Disclaimer: I wrote this at 7:45-8AM, and I woke up at about 7AM.. Yesterday.

 

Your entire point is moot, should firearms not work around large quanties of magic. An exceedingly simple gun may function, but the more complex the gadget, this less likely it is to work.

Note: I know nothing about guns, except that they go "BANG!"

 

WTF

When did this suddenly turn into a Muggle vs Wizard debate? Please, we have a very good thread on that already and it was discussed with far greater depth than you realise. Go visit that and post there.

About the American magical community.....I honeslty couldn't give a fuck. There's nothing except vague hint in canon so we can all hypothesis until we run out breath and die, but the fact is, none of us are right and none of us are wrong. If you're writers, use the version you like the best in your story.

This thing seems to have turned into a giant pissing competition about who is better than who. Well, you're all wrong.

Australia's better. We have kangaroos

 

Damn, but who can beat kangaroos?

http://www.myartpage.com/images/Animals/kangaroo.jpg

 

There may have been good informational diffusion between the countries at one point or another, but the modern era is blatantly isolationist in canon, therefore it follows that there would not have been much informational diffusion during the times in question (which are the times pertinent to our discussion). Furthermore, you would actually be kind of shocked at the amounts of material published over the course of 1,000 years, even in one country with a limited number of people.

As for the Muggle v. Wizard section of the debate:

STFU

You had your thread(s) don't wreck this one.

 

Eh, I think the Muggle vs Wizard part evolved from when KenderCleric said America would be more advanced and then others (including me) replied that they don't need to be advanced and then it grew from there.

And Maltese Falcon, your right. Why were arguing over Magical Britain and America? Australia in all it's forms beat them, with their great kangaroos.

 

Kenshkrix, your entire point is invalid, as the majority of British citizens do not own, nor know how to use, a gun. Those few who do own guns, are, as far as I know, required to keep then unloaded, disassembled, ammunition in a separate locked contained from the body of the weapon, which is required to be kept in a locked container. That would mean that by the time a gun owner got his gun put together, the Death Eaters could easily have killed him.

Remember, ok you may have an alarm system good enough to alert you in time to get your gun ready for a burglar, however, a wizard can apparate straight into your house, or right outside your front door. Door takes a simple charm, or a reducto, to open, and they are inside, no warning to you.

 

deathinapinkboa, Guns don't require electricity, except for railguns, and those aren't hand-held. A few use condensed gas, but that wouldn't be effected by the presence of magic either.

Mordecai, The time period the HP series is set in would mean that the gun laws banning handguns wouldn't yet be in effect, those would come into effect the year after they graduated (I should have looked the laws up, I apologize for that). So instead of a shotgun it'd be a pistol, which might take out one Death Eater in a surprise attack. There would be some warning unless the DEs apparated directly into the house while invisible, you guys seem to be operating on the idea that casting a spell near anything resembling technology would cause it to immediately stop working, the only evidence I remember from canon about the electronic disruption effect is talking about Hogwarts, a bastion of powerful magics. I agree that the average muggle is screwed, but not all of the muggles are going to be entirely unprepared, especially if dozens/hundreds of people have been killed and nobody has been caught.
I'm not going to talk anymore about it in this thread, I promise

 

Why is it only magical America being discussed? Or magical Britain? Why not use the entire world as one big magical three-ring circus?

Sure, JKR hasn't shown much evidence of magical communities outside of Britain, Germany, or France, but who's to say they aren't there? If anything, she probably didn't portray or discuss them because they might not have had any literary purpose within the books. While I don't agree that the 'American' magical community is some type of Eden, nor perfect, I still believe it would be on par with just about any other place in the world.

I forgot who mentioned it earlier in the thread, but why not devise entirely different magical systems based solely on geographical settings? Magic probably differs from place to place, and the only beef I have with JKR, is that she's portrayed 'Magic' as something solely based within Europe. Example - Her entire book of spells are all cast/spoken in Latin.

There were countries and civilizations thriving right alongside Latin speaking times, and it would be bigoted for anyone too discount civilizations such as China, Japan or even Africa. Any other countries that would not have spoken Latin as a native language.

One of the best ways to really tie up this part of the debate is to sit down, research certain geographical settings and then devise your own magical systems based from those findings. Africa could have magical systems based upon rituals and animal sacrifices. Chinese could have magical abilities based upon their teachings of Buddha and meditation. Japanese could have magical abilities ingrained into enchantments and weaponry, etc. (These are just random thoughts thrown out to give examples) There's a wide range of possibilities that I think many of you are missing but all it takes is a bit of HP-believability and creativity.

Every magical system would be unique and versatile in their own way, while also containing their own flaws. Britain and America would have their own devised magical communes, structures and beliefs that differ but essentially bring something to the table, depending on how well the author portrays their strengths and weakness. By limiting yourself to the idea that Wizarding Europe is the epitome of magical communities, or that Wizarding America is the tyrant of all magical power, is a negligence towards the rest of the Wizarding world.

It is called the Wizarding World for a reason. Use it, study up, research every other country, and then when you jump into your own fanfics, make an entire magical world that is just as powerful and flawed as its Muggle counterpart.

Beyond all the pride and shit that's flowing into the thread, it would be difficult to say any one country has magical superiority over the other only because JKR hasn't given us any type of proof that Europe excels beyond others. While Hogwarts is said to be the premier magical school, there could be several others out there with their own founders and teachings that excel where Hogwarts doesn't and flounders where Hogwarts shines.

This could also be said for their respective governments as well. You could easily create a Japanese or Chinese wizarding monarchy, or a Russian wizarding parliament (If that's correct), or even a magical Congress of sorts for America. Just takes a bit of creativity and injected realism.

 

Muggle and magical economy are not related. We have no fucking clue what kind of resources the magical world values.

I'm with Thalarian on this one the world is larger and there are cultures besides the English. This idea has been cooking in my head since the original thread.

Africa being the "New World" of the Magical World. In 1866 the world's largest cache of diamonds was discovered in South Africa. Now The wizarding world got their hands on some rare and powerful Magical crystals that had thus far only been found in Siberia.(An area controlled by Dwarves[Not a friendly bunsh]).

Most wizarding cultures like to keep to themselves so they built the Crystal Cities situating over Sahara. (It takes a lot of sand to make cities out of glass)

Anyway, the idea is still in its raw form. Expand on it or shoot it down.

 

*Pops in from the middle of nowhere*

I feel like alot of this focuses on things that can be lead back to one of two things: the way technology advanced because of the industrial revolution/the cold war/etc or the advances in equal rights because of WWI/WWII/Vietnam Era/etc... Frankly I can't see much of any of these realistically affecting the US wizarding world. In fact, apart from the discussion of why wizards would have emmigrated to the US in the first place, which has bounced back and forth a bit, a lot of the "why and what the US is like today" doesn't really seem to bleed over the any wizarding world in a way I can see apart from JKR implications that WWII also happened in the wizarding world. Anyway, apart form my ramblings, I started this post intending to ask(because History is one of my biggest weakness) what is the equivalent to the US witch trials/burnings? I know that the UK/Western Europe had something but beyond that I don't know of any details about the historical thoughts on magic/witches and resulting actions including time periods in the UK, while I have a little more understanding of the phenomenon in US. In fact, from the little I do understand, I feel like it was much more recent in the US which somehow must have affected how isolated the US wizarding world would have to be and how they would be affected by events after that time period.
...?