What is freedom?
"Parvati, what was that … thing?"
"That was a house elf,"
"Oh, is that what they look like?" said Hermione, "I mean, I've transcribed enough catalogue cards to know that they exist, and that the ceremonies for altering to their loyalty are fraught with complexities. but I haven't studied them specifically or read any books that bothered to include a picture."
Parvati shrugged.
"What are they like?"
"Sort of … if you could imagine taming trows and brownies for house work instead of farm work. Although I think it's all one race and the definitions vary disconcertingly across dialects."
"Never mind the history, Are they beings? I mean that one could obviously talk."
"I don't know, umm, I've never read a book about them, I just know what they're like, from dealing with three or four of them, I guess I consider them beings, or close enough for whatever I care about."
"Ok, what are they like?"
"Well, like dogs, except talking and magic, and liking to use their magic to help their family or whoever their family assigns them to help."
"Like … servants?"
"Yes," said Parvati, "I guess. I think of them more like pets that happen to be people, rather than like people that happen to have the social class of pets."
"That sounds more like slavery."
"Umm," said Parvati, "I think you should think long and hard about how collectivised the local economy is before you try to figure out how to differentiate slavery as an economic class here."
"What do you mean?"
"Take any of the big houses, choose any member from the top to the bottom and ask yourself whether any member of the house is free, or for that matter is a slave."
"Umm?"
"You might want to check with Padma, she went digging back in second year when Dumbledore got ousted, then replaced twice. But did you know that many of our professors, the headmaster included, their salary is paid to their head of house. By modern tradition, many heads of house deduct taxes and divert it right back to each house member, but there's no law suggesting that's normal. Lots of institutions here operate the same way. Even in the muggle world, I believe the Swiss Guards that follow The Pope around don't get paid at all, their families do."
"Oh," said Hermione, "So it's slavery but since everyone does it, it's fine and no one minds that it happens to house elves too?"
"Not exactly, well, maybe a little," said Parvati, "let me get to my next point first, look at the Smiths, Headmaster Smith's parents Heads of House, right?"
"Ok. What about them?"
"Are they free?"
"Of course, why wouldn't they be?"
"Right, anyone should laugh at me for asking, right? They have no one telling them what to do, and everyone from all over the country is sending them money for all the work all their children and children-in-law and grandchildren, and probably some of their nephews and great nephews are doing."
"That is so weird,"
"Right," said Parvati, "but theoretically it's not their money, it's the house's money, they're only supposed to using it to the betterment of their house. And above and beyond their two careers, they also have to look out for the interests of their house, finding jobs or tuition and apprenticeships for their dependants, etc. Writing letters of apology for all their dependants. Writing letters of disapprobation so that things can get resolved quickly with a minimum of hard feelings and no duels or feuds or more modernly, law suits, but whatever. Depending on how needy and/or rude your dependants are, we're talking about a full time job."
"Oh,"
"And probably the property is entailed, sometimes the money too after a fashion, these houses are more like corporations than what muggles think of as families. Except that there's no board of governors process to swap out to a better CEO if the current one isn't satisfactory, or just isn't suited to the work and maybe wants to resign."
"That doesn't seem optimal."
"So the CEO can't resign, and even muggles can't find all that many people willing to be CEO without also paying them ridiculous amounts of money. And many of these houses have ridiculous amounts of money saved up, but aren't actually generating much new income, there's no way they could pay their heads enough to make it worth their while to deal with the headache. Now tell me that these Heads of House aren't also slaves."
"Hmm," said Hermione, "I see what you mean. So now instead of … alright, so what's your point."
"In the muggle world, material wealth is a shortcut for calculating both status and freedom of choice."
"Certainly,"
"In the wizarding world, individuals might not personally have material wealth, they have magical prowess, and they have the backing of their house. That is to say the status and freedom of choice that money brings, but it's the question of the house's money, not your own. So as long as you can refrain from offending anyone, you can sit content that you're protected by the wealth and status of your house. And to some extent, if you must need's give offence, you must weigh it against the status of the house of the person or people you're going to offend, vs. how valuable you are to your own house."
"Ah, I still think equality might be a simpler and more healthy way to run a society."
"True, and we're all welcome to move to France, apparently."
"How to do French perceive house elves?"
"Not a clue," said Parvati, "but … just because muggle English humans prize freedom of choice and denominate status through a surrogate currency of currency, doesn't mean that any race other than goblins does the same. In fact I don't think freedom of choice is one of their priorities. Money seems to be though."
"And what do elves prize?"
"I believe the power / status they notice having is the ability to alter the mood of their humans, or some kind of recognition of responsibility for such a change. They like being dramatic, they were bred from imps after all, anyway working from behind the scenes helps them keep our notice of them in the 'pleasantly surprised' category instead of the unpleasantly surprised that imps are more known for eliciting."
"So … no one pays them, but no one pays humans either so it's ok?"
"No, so no one pays elves in money. Would you pay crookshanks in money?"
"No, Not exactly."
"Right, you pay a pet in affection and pet treats, and you pay an elf in mindfulness that they've done you a service. Probably acknowledgement also. They're supposed to be able to hear through walls, I mean magically far not just as far as ears that large ought to imply."
"Ah," said Hermione, "Should we be creeped out about the invasion of privacy that implies?"
"I … have no idea. I don't get creeped out by dogs watching me or washing themselves in my presence, as long as they refrain from jumping on me, so … I don't know, decide for yourself."
Vector looks in
Tom glanced over his growing party, each member either a mover or shaker in their own right, or the right hand assistant of another member who was. At the core were Padma and Draco, of the silver pen and the silver tongue. There was Parvati and Neville, though Parvati could be counted on to pay attention to the discussion for only about the first half of the meeting and then check out when she couldn't concentrate any more. Sometimes her magic took on a distinctly equine quality when she reached that trance state. Either she had a horse familiar somewhere, or someone should get her some animagus training.
Luna the seer and Harriet, who could freely touch him now, perhaps ever since Potter notified her that he'd helped cure the curse 'in his scar.' He'd never caught Potter in her place again, but … He had the feeling he would be able to tell the difference in their reading habits or in their argument style.
In the next tier out were: Nott who seemed popular with all the hufflepuffs except the Smiths who were self contained enough that no one was popular with them, it was instead them who were either popular or respected by most everyone.
Hermione and Blaise were the third snake and raven pair, though officially Hermione was a gryffindor. They weren't as regular attenders as the rest, Blaise had ties to Italy at least in his own conscience. Hermione to the muggle world. Whether their focus changed as they began to face what they intended to do after school remained to be seen.
The older years … well the very members he hoped would be core members fifth through seventh were those most likely to take on prefect-ships or choose to concentrate on their certification tests. They still attended, but some of them checked out even earlier than poor Patil Parvati. He might should suggest a partition at fifth year, to try to keep the young ones from having their enthusiasm dampened by the tiredness of the older pupils. The exception to the rule of older pupils not taking the club discussions seriously were the Head boy and girl, Penelope Clearwater had an interesting perspective and could articulate it well, perhaps not well enough for first and second years, but well enough for the purposes of Tom's minutes collection. Percy Weasley on the other hand could be counted on to paint a vivid picture of how things were done in the ministry and how impractical it would be to change things around for no reason. He could be the conservative voice of reason, or he could come off as a bit of a paladin for mediocrity, not according to any simple formula that Tom could decipher, but he could always be counted on to express his views passionately.
There was another tradition that had popped up in the fringes of his club. Though he couldn't decipher how or when, (which boded well for their ability to keep important secrets). 'Spimsharing,' was the agreed upon name of late. Apparently the tradition was already common and almost regularly practised among the set who knew and almost universally denied, when it was brought up (in carefully veiled terms) so that the ethics could be discussed. Apparently Granger was the only one who didn't know anyone else spimmed. And Longbottom was the only one who'd been going outside his house to catch rides.
The two thirds of the club who didn't know what was going on, thought the other third was advocating risky potion use. It was amusing.
By the end of February, Tom was fairly sure that the fraction of members 'in the know' had gone up to closer to two thirds though he wouldn't deign to put his money on a guess.
So far as he could tell the members with the best outcomes from the change were Patil Parvati and Lucy Salmae's little sister, who's name he couldn't remember Cherith or something.
Percy Weasley was adamantly opposed both to spimsharing and to the whole public discussion but for once couldn't seem to express himself because he was hampered by the secrecy agreements. That also had been terribly amusing. Tom was fairly sure he'd tried to report the whole thing to Vector and hadn't been able to give a single detail concrete enough to be taken seriously. Vector had come and asked to see the minutes. He'd shown them to her willingly. The cheap dictation quill didn't have the ability to recognise speakers by their voice to record attribution of their statements, and MacDougal, a shy ravenclaw, had been presiding that night, instead of names in the minutes most of them had been given permission to speak by a pointing gavel and an optional reference to nose size or hair colour.
It had been a surreal experience at the time watching MacDougal using every ounce of her rarely exercised grit to sit or stand in front of everyone and enforce parliamentary procedure. It was even more surreal to vicariously experience it again watching Professor Vector read through it.
"Are all your meetings like this?" Vector had said.
"In which particular?" said Riddle.
"No holds barred ideological free for all? But … strangely polite?"
"We fight for and against ideas," said Riddle, "attacking an opponent is against the rules. Umm most of the members know each other's names better than MacDougal does. Or we did before we got so big."
Vector nodded. "Do you know who has time turners vs. Who is sharing them?"
"Has whats?" said Tom.
Vector glared at him. "What do you think this was about?"
"What all our discussions are about, how to tell when laws need to be updated. How to design good law. And how to live sanely with out-of-date laws until the laws do get updated. And conversely how to adjust when laws that you didn't think were out-of-date get updated to something inconvenient."
"Hmm," she said, "and … you find enough to talk about to fill up seven years worth of weekly club time?"
Riddle shrugged, "so far, though we have had some repeats."
"Is this discussion on spimmsharing the most … questionable discussion so far?"
"Questionable in what way?" said Riddle.
"Where large percentages of pupils advocated breaking contracts and misusing government property?"
Riddle shrugged, "Perhaps I don't have enough experience with the central topic, I was most intrigued by the discussion of ethics of sharing any windfall with friends, vs enemies who happened to have the same needs as you and who it costs you nothing to share with."
"Hmm," she said.
"Truthfully I didn't find it nearly so discomforting as an earlier discussion on whether there were necromancy rituals capable of or ethical to use to instantly make murderers harmless, so they can immediately reenter society instead of wasting away in jail or being kissed."
"What was the conclusion of that discussion?"
"A few necromantic rituals rarely documented outside of legend were proposed as possible to re-purpose, but it was unknown whether a ritual really existed with the desired effects, and without that knowledge no ethical judgement could be made, and no one was really willing to advocate the experiments to create a ritual if it did not yet exist. Except perhaps by the department of mysteries, and only on those already condemned to be kissed."
"Ah!"
{End Chapter 22, End Year 3}
For those who don't know, between when I first imagined The Modern Politics Debate Club, and now, it has come into existence, over at /r/TheMotte. And yes, they do cover a wide range of uncomfortable topics from many angles. Yes they expect everyone to argue for and against ideas, not for or against certain people for having them, nor attack people for trying to understand and articulate opposing positions.
And no, I claim no responsibility for its real world existence or success in any way.
Now you know, You're welcome.
