6 Reasons Why Harry Potter is Secretly A Libertarian Fairy Tale
Harry Potter is already full of all kinds of bizarre subtexts, but when you really break it down, it also seems just like the kind of bedtime story Ron Paul would read to his grandkids…
1) Businesses are free to sell deadly items, even to kids, without worrying about pesky regulations. Apparently, the invisible hand of the market is okay with these things, because the wizarding world seems to have accepted and adapted to it.
2) Wizards are apparently the only people left in the entire world that have stuck to the gold standard instead of switching to paper money.
3) It’s ostensibly a meritocracy, with the best wizards enjoying the most prestige. In reality, however, it has a lot more to do with who your parents are than most of them would like to admit, especially since they’re all born into power and attend private school.
4) All wizards are far more powerful than any non-wizard, but they must not let them know that because the teeming hordes would be jealous and destroy them (i.e., class warfare).
5) The government is either ridiculously inept (denying Voldemort’s return for political reasons), horribly corrupt (it’s overrun by Death Eaters), or outright evil (Dolores Umbridge).
6) Voldemort is a Randian superman whose self-interest and distaste for the status quo led to him becoming the most powerful wizard. He is only able to be defeated (twice) because of technicalities springing from the vague, arbitrary laws of magic. Now switch “magic” with “business.”
This dovetails nicely with various articles about why the Potterverse would be a terrible, horrible place to actually live.
