Comment by patio11

I love Harry Potter, but somebody needs to explain to me how e.g. the Weasleys experience material privation by Muggle standards with regards to things like not being able to afford clothes when both Weasley parents and, for most of the series, most of their children are all capable of conjuring valuable things (including clothes) from the ether. Or how Harry is rich like a king due to his inheritance despite his parents having no detectable business or reason for excessive wealth (well, aside from their prodigious abilities at conjuring valuable things from the ether). Or how Hogwarts and the Ministry of Magic, both of which are shown as having truly prodigious amounts of wealth expended in their construction and upkeep, are sustained via contributions from a parallel economy where the level of economic sophistication has not exceeded "a one-room store attended by an artisan", except for (apparently) multinational corporations, branding campaigns, and market sophistication in... quidditch broomsticks.

Economics is a real spoilsport for fantasy literature. I was once taught a single sentence which now nags at me in every book I read: "Describe how this army is fed." For example, the carnivorous Canim in the Furies of Calderon series fielded an army of some 60,000 apex predators in a sparsely populated agricultural region for a period of over two years. Their purchasing agent should require about as many sources of meat as all the McDonalds nationwide, but the economy as depicted couldn't possibly support that.