Ayn Rand’s Harry Potter and The Sorcerer’s Stone
“You’re a wizard, Harry,” Hagrid said. “And you’re coming to Hogwarts.”
“What’s Hogwarts?” Harry asked.
“It’s wizard school.”
“It’s not a public school, is it?”
“No, it’s privately run.”
“Good. Then I accept. Children are not the property of the state; everyone who wishes to do so has the right to offer educational goods or services at a fair market rate. Let us leave at once.”
***
“Malfoy bought the whole team brand-new Nimbus Cleansweeps!” Ron said, like a poor person. “That’s not fair!”
“Everything that is possible is fair,” Harry reminded him gently. “If he is able to purchase better equipment, that is his right as an individual. How is Draco’s superior purchasing ability qualitatively different from my superior Snitch-catching ability?”
“I guess it isn’t,” Ron said crossly.
Harry laughed, cool and remote, like if a mountain were to laugh. “Someday you’ll understand, Ron.”
***
Professor Snape stood at the front of the room, sort of Jewishly. “There will be no foolish wand-waving or silly incantations in this class. As such, I don’t expect many of you to appreciate the subtle science and exact art that is potion-making. However, for those select few who possess, the predisposition…I can teach you how to bewitch the mind and ensnare the senses. I can tell you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even put a stopper in death.”
Harry’s hand shot up.
“What is it, Potter?” Snape asked, irritated.
“What’s the value of these potions on the open market?”
“What?”
“Why are you teaching children how to make these valuable products for ourselves at a schoolteacher’s salary instead of creating products to meet modern demand?”
“You impertinent boy–”
“Conversely, what’s to stop me from selling these potions myself after you teach us how to master them?”
“I–”
“This is really more of a question for the Economics of Potion-Making, I guess. What time are econ lessons here?”
“We have no economics lessons in this school, you ridiculous boy.”
Harry Potter stood up bravely. “We do now. Come with me if you want to learn about market forces!”
The students poured into the hallway after him. They had a leader at last.
***
Harry and Ron stood before the Mirror of Erised. “My God,” Ron said. “Harry, it’s your dead parents.”
Harry’s eyes flicked momentarily over to the mirror. “So it is. This information is neither useful nor productive. Let us leave at once, to assist Hagrid in his noble enterprise of raising as many dragon eggs as he sees fit, in spite of our country’s unjust dragon-trading restrictions.”
“But it’s your parents, Harry,” Ron said. Ron never really got it.
Harry sighed. “The fundamental standard for all relationships is the trader principle, Ron.”
“I don’t understand,” Ron said.
“Of course you don’t,” said Harry affectionately. “This principle holds that we should interact with people on the basis of the values we can trade with them – values of all sorts, including common interests in art, sports or music, similar philosophical outlooks, political beliefs, sense of life, and more. Dead people have no value according to the trader principle.”
“But they gave birth to y–”
“I made myself, Ron,” Harry said firmly.
***
“Give me your wand, boy,” Voldemort hissed.
“I cannot do that. This wand represents my wealth, which is itself a tangible result of my achievements. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think,” Harry said bravely.
Voldemort gasped.
“There is a level of cowardice lower than that of the conformist: the fashionable non-conformist.”
Voldemort began to melt. Harry lit a cigarette, because he was the master of fire.
“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. The minimum wage is a tax on the successful. The market will naturally dictate the minimum wage without the government stepping in to determine arbitrary limits.”
Voldemort howled.
“I’m going to sell copies of my wand at an enormous markup,” Harry said, “and you can buy one like everyone else.”
Voldemort had been defeated.
“He hated us for our freedom,” Ron said.
“No, Ron,” Harry said. “He hated us for our free markets.”
Hermione ached with desire for the both of them to master her, but nobody paid her any attention. They had empires to build.
Artwork by Amy Collier, who once saw Fabio at an airport. Fabio is an Italian model who has appeared on many classic romance novels, such as Love Me with Fury, Lovestorm, and More Than a Feeling. He is 6’3” barefoot; usually in cowboy boots.
Tags: admit it at least one point reading these books you were like we get it rowling snape has a HOOK NOSE and GREASY HAIR and he's a big ol GARGAMEL JEW lay off the semitic canards, amy collier, ayn rand, books, don't even get me started on gringotts, harry potter, objectivism, wizards, yes i know they don't call them public schools in england
SORT OF JEWISHLY
I accidentally had all caps on for that but I'm not changing it
DUDE I'M NOT MAD ABOUT IT BUT LET'S AT LEAST ACKNOWLEDGE THAT JK ROWLING WROTE SNAPE AS GARGAMEL AND IT WAS A LITTLE ANTI-SEMITIC
Yeah, all the overemphasis on his "bigass hooked nose" & such is just gross.
And his greasy hair, like every Anthony Trollope novel featuring someone creepily possibly Jewish.
I am Jewish and I never caught that, because I was so caught up on "the goblins are short, twisty, considered completely untrustworthy, have been persecuted by wizardkind for centuries, AND THEY HOARD GOLD? DAMNIT ROWLING NORMALLY JEWS ARE AT LEAST GIVEN THE DIGNITY OF HAVING THEIR FANTASY ANALOGUE BE DWARVES."
(Dwarves or dwarfs? Either way, they've very upsetting.)
Dwarves in fantasy, dwarfs in real life
It's no sicker than your thing with dwarfs!
Dwarves?
Dwarfs?
Dwarves are VERY UPSETTING!
Not forgettingThe tasks unachievableMountains unscalable —
AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AH, AH-AH-AH-AH-AH-AGONEE…
Now trying to imagine Into the Woods, by Ayn Rand…
MISERY! WOE@ Much stronger than yours…Ayn Rand cannot have a version of Into the Woods, because Ayn Rand is the epitome of awfulness and Stephen Sondheim is the epitome of the sublime. Nevertheless, I'm trying to turn Jack into Howard Roark. “I will not chop down beanstalks for anyone but myself.” “THERE'S A GIANT TRYING TO KILL US.” “There is no point in collective action, because only the individual is – *KA-THUNK*”
Tolkien’s dwarves weren’t based on Jewish stereotypes; they were based on the dwarves in the Norse Eddas and other Teutonic sources like the Ring of the Nibelungen. Vikings like Teh Gold a lot too.
"The dwarves of course are quite obviously – wouldn't you say that in many ways they remind you of the Jews? Their words are Semitic obviously, constructed to be Semitic."
― J.R.R. Tolkien
Harry's veering a little bit into dirtbag territory with that cigarette, eh?
I NEED DIRTBAG HARRY POTTER IMMEDIATELY
It's a metaphor.
Can I get you started on Gringotts? Please.
SHE LITERALLY WROTE ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS SHADOWY RACE OF GOBLIN-JEWS WHO CONTROLLED ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK
Just once I'd like a genre fiction story to have stingy, money-grubbing Vikings. All banks are run by very thinly veiled norsemen, who love axes and gold more than all else.
The Jotun was about four feet taller than Harry. He had a ruddy, brutal face, a voluminous blonde beard and, Harry noticed, very long fingers, and feet, and arms, and legs. His torso was also pretty long, as were the horns of his helmet, and the haft of the battle axe at his side.
* * *
"You don't understand, Harry," said Bill. "Nobody could understand unless they've lived with the Jotuns. To a Jotun, the rightful and true master of any object is the taker, not the purchaser. All objects are, in Jotun eyes, rightfully theirs for the taking"
"But if it was bought from a Jotun—"
"—then they would consider it rented by the one who had paid the money. They have, however, great difficulty with the idea of Jotun-claimed objects passing peacefully from wizard to wizard. You saw Þorsteinn Eiríksson's face when the tiara passed under his eyes. He disapproves. I believe he thinks, as do the fiercest of his kind, which is pretty much all of them, that it ought to have been returned as tribute to the Jotuns once the original purchaser died. They consider our habit of keeping Jotun objects, passing them from wizard to wizard without further wergild or armed contest, as a puny sort of sneak-thieving. It irks them, because then they have to go the trouble of conquering their treasures back."
Would read seven phone-book-assed volumes of this, even the parts that are about wizard calvinball.
Ditto, and also A++ for "wizard calvinball."
"wizard calvinball"
Best and most succinct description of quidditch.
Can I just start calling the series "A Calvinist Plays Calvinball"? Please?
I love this so much.
Well, isn't that what dwarves are? They have helmets and axes and giant often-reddish beards. Very Norse. We all say they are supposed to be Jews because of the gold thing. [but also maybe there is more history/backing for that comparison, I would like to know, I just feel weird about saying any money-focused fantasy race is supposed to be Jews]
I thought it was less the gold fever than that Tolkein made them dispossessed insular merchant-wanderers living within but sort of outside of society and specifically metaphorical jews in his extended modernity allegory, and everyone else just copied those characteristics wholesale whether they made sense in any other context or not because fantasy novels are a literary wasteland.
Right, that makes sense. I feel like I have read other fantasy novels that are more "underground mining society that happens to value gold extremely highly" where it doesn't follow as much.
To my recollection anyway the comical gold fixation is like the one now-stock dwarf trait that isn't actually all that pronounced in The Hobbit or LOTR, except in that the obscene lucre of the mines is representative of everything they've lost and how far they've fallen, so it looks like somewhere along the line the people cutting and pasting passages from Lord of the Rings to make "new" fantasy novels did figure out that the dwarves were supposed to be jews, and turning the dwarves into cartoonish greed monsters was their response!
Not all fantasy novels!
(I'm sorry, I tried not to but I couldn't stop myself.)
This sent me down a Wikipedia rabbit hole, in which I discovered that the Niebelungen were considered to be from Burgundy. So really the dwarves are French.
Oh my god I cannot with how beautiful this is.
I have been waiting for this and that cover design is perfect.
OK reading now.
and yet, amazingly, rand harry's not quite as insufferable as rowling harry. but that's probably because i haven't been able to stop laughing. that last line is inspired.
Though 'erect' may have been a useful alternative to 'build' in this context.
"yes I know they don't call them public schools in england" but this is America goddammit and this website is in America where the free market is the free-est and we call schools by their correct and non-misleading names
The adverbs.
I'd rather read these books.
Oh my god Hermione as Dagny I CANT IT IS TOO HORRIFIC/PERFECT
Okay, now I have to ask if you've read Harry Potter Becomes A Communist: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9655837/1/Harry-Pott…
"'What's false consciousness?' Ron asked curiously. I knew he would be more open to communist ideas because he was part of the proletariat, whereas Hermione was part of the bourgeois intelligentsia."
"'Harry, are you a Communist?' asked Hermione in a quiet voice. I could tell she was scared, probably of losing her private property."
Well, damnit, I had work to do today..
Also Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality , an AU where HP is a prodigy science whiz and questions basically everything about the HP universe. Ron is dismissed as irrelevant after the first time they meet. (because he is lost in the paradoxes of time.)
The hilarious/disturbing thing about that series is that it is intended to be an introduction to the author's rationalist-transhumanist cult. It begins with clever Harry Potter fanfic; it leads to you perusing their huge community blog about cognitive biases, logical fallacies, and probability and statistics; and then somehow it ends with you signing up for cryonic freezing and sending all the money you can spare to something called the "Singularity Institute" so that they can avert Skynet and one day revive your soul inside of a computer simulation paradise.
Oh, oops. I definitely always assumed it was a really long joke.
Oh it is! But the author isn't in on it.
(I'd totally recommend it though. Even though it wasn't intended to be a lampoon of the type of overzealous rationalist who hangs out on r/skeptic, it might as well have been. And it is clever.)
Transhumanists are basically just premillennial dispensationalists but for comic books instead of the Book of Revelations, aren't they
Actually, this particular variety of transhumanism is based on the idea that a singularity is likely but a singularity we'd consider good is very unlikely; their aim is to work on the math/design of trustworthy machine intelligences that behave as humans intend even in the absence of supervision.
Yeah, that's what I meant by "avert Skynet."
Sure, but that point seems to have slipped past GoatseFanfic.
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?
Now that sounds like a wormhole worthy of a few drinks.
The Singularity Institute changed its name to the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, with the declared "mission [of] ensur[ing] that the creation of smarter-than-human intelligence has a positive impact. We aim to make intelligent machines behave as we intend even in the absence of immediate human supervision."
Its CEO, Luke Muehlhauser, is on record as being unsure that donating to MIRI is the most effective use of one's charitable dollars.
Also, welcome to The Toast! I wasn't expecting a LessWrongite to actually show up and reply. (You were quick!) And I probably gave you a bad impression of us by calling your movement a cult. I think most LessWrongites understand why outsiders would think of them as a cult, though.
And if it is a cult, it's a cult that cares a lot about math, which endears it to my math-loving heart. Also, I have no doubt that your leaders truly believe in their mission; I don't think they are L Ron Hubbards inventing a religion to fleece rubes.
What, just because a charismatic sexual sadist revealed universal truths to us while soliciting donations to the non-profit he started?
(…one of us, one of us…)
Adding: It's not that I was quick — it's a testimony to the brilliant humor and resulting share-worthiness of the OP.
Mallory tweeted about Ayn Rand's Harry Potter a little bit ago and HPatMoR was basically the very first thing I thought of!
I just can't see Randian Harry continuing to hang out with noted poor person Ron though.
oh don't worry this is part I in a series
"Who is Ron Galt? Sorry, I mean… Ronbledore?"
Once again giving thanks that Nicole's promise of "no more Harry Potter stuff" has fallen by the wayside, gloriously.
sort of Jewishly I CANNOT.
I just had the exact same thought when I read Mallory's comment that this was part I in a series. yessss
the worst part is that I'm the one who made her make that promise, I AM A HYPOCRITE
It's okay, you are the exception to every rule.
Besides, the free market demands it.
Nice abs, Randian Harry
People should be really glad I am alone in this room, my loud laughter is obnoxious
“What’s the value of these potions on the open market?”
I CAN'T
Give the people what they want. The people want DRAGONS.
I'd really like to know more about Fabio, though.
Of course! He has also been the spokesperson for The Geek Squad, OralB Sensitive Advantage Toothbrush, Nationwide Insurance, Versace, and the American Cancer Society.
Fabio boasts many accolades.
Can we keep you here forever?
How about "A Moment in Time" http://www.fabioifc.com/BOOKCOVER_SHOTS_2/a_momen…
a passion that journeys beyond time
YES
“No, Ron,” Harry said. “He hated us for our free markets.”
You are the Ta-Nehisi Coates of libertarian fan fiction.
I feel like Harry, being a self-fulfilled independent ubermensch, should gaze into the mirror of Erised and see only his reflection looking back at him.
It'd also be the only mirror his reflection shows up in
I know it was necessary for the humor element, but I wish the Snape scene could have been handled differently, since (IIRC) Snape DID want to work in private practice as a potioneer but was blackmailed by Dumbledore (a metaphor for the aged, autocratic State?) into working as an underpaid school teacher.
Also, how the hell is Harry Galt-Potter not in Slytherin?!?
I think that's mostly fanon views on Snape.
Blackmailed? I thought Snape voluntarily devoted his life to the suicidal pursuit of vengeance against Voldemort for the murder of St. Lily.
Of course, I haven't read the books in a long time, and no, I will not read them again. So I'll have to believe whatever The Toast tells me is true. (This is not different from my usual life.)
"Hermione ached with desire for the both of them to master her, but nobody paid her any attention. They had empires to build."
I am dead of laughter. This is the best.
"I build myself."
So. Perfect.
That was fantastic. Loved the line about Hermione.
“Give me your wand, boy,” Voldemort hissed.
“I cannot do that. This wand represents my wealth, which is itself a tangible result of my achievements. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think,” Harry said bravely.
Voldemort promptly pummeled the annoying kid to death.
Even while dying, the dumbass didn't stop pontificating and went on and on about how using physical force against another man is the epitome of evil and the greatest form of transgression against another man's capacity to live.
Voldemort gazed amusingly at the devastated corpse of the person he had sought to kill for so many years and remarked, "Yes, I am evil, bitch!"
La fin