Hermione, join me as Minister of Magic!

In addition, Goldstein, Porter, and Bruce, who went to school at Hogwarts, all have branches in the United States, Patil is in India, and Qiu Zhang is in China...Little Hogwarts has become a part of world politics for a while. The essence of intersection.

And Lockhart will never let go of this opportunity.

Chapter 290 Lockhart on Liberty

After the selection of the warriors and warrior attendants, just as the sports department and sponsors expected, the attention of the five-wild tournament suddenly rose to a new level.

Of course, the media that bought the right to report would not waste this opportunity. After their reporters sent the live report back to the headquarters, the major media immediately started their own actions.

Of course, the countries that have warriors selected are all boasting their own warriors to the sky. The implication is that "warriors need your support and solidarity". petition for re-election

Of course, these are just a means of hype. They just want to cause controversy. The warriors selected by the Goblet of Fire will not be changed no matter what.

Although Lockhart has never heard of it, it seems that the warriors of Ilvermorny and Waggadu are quite famous in their country. A few days after their election, letters of solidarity from all over the world flew to the country like snowflakes. Hogwarts.

Some of these letters are enthusiastic encouragement, such as stationery covered with lipstick; Directly, the letter directly stated how much money I have bet on him, and if I dare to lose, I will make you look good.

Lockhart knew this because he needed to open and read all the letters.

The vicious incident of the World Cup is also a good thing for Lockhart, that is, the Ministry of Magic agreed to him "during the Tournament, strictly register every wizard's wand or other spell-casting tool, and record its use at Hogwarts. Itinerary and correspondence within the scope of "Excessive requirements.

Lockhart recognized that the wolf in the second article must have coriander, and the old Mu You also named the item in the same article

What to do, if Hogwarts doesn't want people to die, it's better to follow strict security measures.

This is undoubtedly a bit excessive, and it has aroused the disgust of many people. After the plan came out, many wizards protested to the Ministry of Magic.

And Fudge also let out a word, asking Lockhart to find a way to solve this matter, so as not to damage his reputation as a minister.

Taking public opinion into consideration, Lockhart specially concocted an article titled "Has Civil Liberty Violated?" Rita Skeeter published it in the newspaper.

In the article, he divides "freedom" into two interpretations, that is, "positive freedom" and "negative freedom" proposed by Isaiah

The so-called negative freedom refers to the extent to which people can prevent themselves from being controlled, and this is also a relatively narrow sense of freedom. Like the freedom of peace, the freedom they want is a freedom "not to be interfered with by the outside world".

Obviously, it can be seen from the above two examples that the so-called "negative freedom" has fatal flaws.

No one can achieve "complete freedom", not to mention the internal obstacles brought about by passion and desire, even the "freedom boundary" will prevent a person from achieving the so-called "negative freedom".

For example, if a person wants to kill, and uses "the freedom to kill" to justify himself, then he is doomed to violate the freedom of existence of others, and the resulting conflicts will make the freedom he can enjoy even worse. Less not more.

Positive freedom refers to the extent to which people can control themselves, that is, people

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Freedom to follow decisions made when rational and self-disciplined, belongs to "

be your own master"

But "positive freedom" has two sides. Some of them are more positive, such as "compulsory education" and "compulsory military service", which constitute the basic framework of a modern country.

shelf.There are also "epidemic isolation" and "dynamic clearing", which also ensure the harmony and stability of a society.

But the negative part is that the concept of "positive freedom" is easy to be used, such as Grindelwald, Voldemort, and Mustache, etc., use a more beautiful concept to make others obey the "greater interests" he bewitched ’, and make that person think he chose to follow them out of reason.

If these two concepts go deeper, it will involve a philosophical discussion on which of the "id", "ego" and "superego" is the real "self".

But Lockhart was not in the mood to write articles in the newspaper, so he just used a few relatively simple examples as now, and Rita Skeeter said that the Ministry of Magic did not hurt anyone. "Positive freedom" because everyone wants to watch the game, and watch the game safely.If you feel that you are in the middle of the market?

Rita Skeeter's article has temporarily stunned a group of potential opponents. Political theorists in the wizarding world seem to be studying the article she "wrote", so they won't be in the mood to fight for a while, anyway. It's just a business game.

It is the instinct of scholars to be hungry when they see new knowledge. These two explanations about freedom were only put forward by Muggle scholars in the second half of the 20th century, and they have become one of the theoretical cornerstones of the so-called "neoliberalism". I believe that Enough for these wizards to think for a while.

And because Rita Skeeter's position has always been with those in power at the Ministry of Magic: no one would doubt that she would say these things.While defending himself, Lockhart also buried a nail for Voldemort, feeling very satisfied.

Of course Gemma knows who wrote this article, and the part she is most satisfied with is the explanation of the "positive freedom" part, which has been successfully misled

Based on an elitist self-consciousness of "foolish people can't count things", Gemma is satisfied

Cut out that part of the newspaper and kept it in my notebook.

"That's true," she said to Lockhart. "Some things you don't have to explain to those people why you do it, you just need to tell them how to do it. Thinking is really not suitable for those idiots. They don't even know what freedom is

Lockhart decided not to respond to her words, even though he also thought some people were really stupid, let alone Pride and Prejudice.

The difference between a seasoned person and a young person is not age, but knowing what to say and what not to say, or what to say and not to say when it should not be said.

It's just that what he didn't expect was that the people who read this article also included a girl who was interested in politics, and the conclusion she drew was completely opposite to Gemma's.

Chapter 290 The Sixth Split

While eating breakfast, Hermione Granger took the freshly baked Daily Prophet from the owl's beak.

After reading the news on the front page, her attention was immediately attracted to an article on the second page, which was a discussion written by Lockhart about whether increased security violated the civil liberties of wizards.

Then, an uncontrollable cheer rose from her throat.

"I see!"

Hermione Granger tugged at Harry and Ron enthusiastically, and pointed to the report: "If we want to give house-elves freedom, we must first try to avoid infringing on their "negative freedom", and then Find a way to influence them to understand that the pursuit of "positive freedom" like Dobby is the real freedom!"

But neither Harry nor Ron wanted to discuss this with her, let alone feel sleepy at the sight of dense text.

"Come on, can't you help Harry and let him concentrate on thinking about how to deal with those things on Halloween?" Ron complained.

"But he's just a squire, and it's Cedric who needs to solve the problem." Hermione pointed out.

Ron curled his lips: "It's hard to say, didn't you hear what Dumbledore said? If the warrior dies, Harry has to collect his body..."

At this time, there were a few Hufflepuff students passing by behind them. After hearing what Ron said, they glared at the three of them, and there was a feeling that they wanted to have a fight with them.

But for the sake of Harry's upcoming battle, they didn't do that, and Guan Guan couldn't do such a violent thing.

"Be careful what you say, Weasley!" said one of the boys. "If you're really worried about the game, you should talk to Diggory."

Harry quickly stepped forward to calm the matter: "We will, thank you, Smith

Lockhart knew nothing of what was going on in the castle, and he couldn't do it now.

Because the souvenir market opened in Hogsmeade finally opened, he had to go and watch it in person, and Gemma was also accompanying him to inspect it together.

There are still a few days before Halloween, and foreign tourists have appeared in Hogsmeade village one after another.And if Lockhart wants to try his own "intermediate trade" policy in the future, then he must come up with a statement now.

Thanks to his one-year teaching at Hogwarts, Lockhart has been able to determine that wizards actually have a very strong demand for various industrial products produced by Muggles.

Flea markets run by Muggle-born students have become more and more popular recently, and even professors will buy some of their fleas.

As far as the purchases from Muggles are counted by the Ministry of Magic, metal ingots from the metallurgical industry and mechanical products such as automobiles, motorcycles, and bicycles account for the majority. There are some non-magic medicinal potions.

As for cultural and entertainment products such as books, they were subject to the control of the Ministry of Magic and could not immediately enter the wizarding world.

Wizards need to buy things from Muggles and relatively have no outlets.If this situation continues, the wizarding world will undoubtedly continue to lose blood, and currencies such as gold will also be transferred from wizards to Muggles.

For example, the plane bought by Malfoy's family is second-hand, but one still needs

Millions of dollars, if it weren't for the Muggle currency earned in grain futures, even the Malfoy family would not be able to afford so much gold expenditure.

The essence of Voldemort's rebellion in the original book is probably the inevitable panic that occurred after the pure-blood family realized that the gold was flowing to Muggles.

But now it was different, because the two transactions initiated by Lockhart had already seen profits.

Originally, the Ministry of Magic had to spend 10,000+ Galleons every year to buy Muggle industrial products, and then distribute the purchased industrial products to the pure-blood families who invested, and the pure-blood families would lose 10,000+ Galleons of gold every year.

But now Nigeria's oil wells can generate hundreds of thousands of galleons of income a day, even after all kinds of taxes and equipment loss, they have made a lot of money.

According to the current speed, they don't even need a year to pay back the original estimate. If it works well, they can recover the previous investment in half a month, and there will be more and more in the future.

In the face of this money, no matter how much Lockhart repeatedly jumps in the political arena, no matter how close he is to the Lions in politics, even if he wants to turn the International Department into his own territory, the pure-blood family will only turn a blind eye Close one eye.

And Gemma Farley, who has become more and more bold recently, is the representative-Mr. Farley is no longer prepared to interfere with the choices made by his daughter.

The only problem they have now is how to fabricate a pedigree of the descendants of the pure-blood family, and then find an opportunity to logically label Lockhart with "pure blood" on his forehead.

A person like this must be pure blood, and it must be pure blood—this is the result of those wizards' discussions.

Just like the black girl Sarah Rector, she should have spent her whole life under the discrimination of whites like other blacks.But because she was so rich, the U.S. government had to force her to declare that she was white, or they would make it up

That set cannot justify itself.

In addition to the oil business, the hair tonic sold by Extraordinary Pharmacists also has a net profit of tens of thousands of Galleons a week. Although this money is only a drop in the bucket compared to the oil business, compared to the traditional business of wizards, it is worthless. To describe this profit as "amazing" is still an understatement.

With the profits from these two businesses, the purebloods find themselves facing a sudden change in the nature of their problems.

The original problem is that everyone has less and less money, so the most important thing to worry about is how to "reduce expenditure", but now after "exporting super" to "incoming super", what everyone has to worry about is the money in hand Too much and they don't know what to spend.

This is not a good thing. There is essentially no difference between 100 million Galleons of gold and 100 billion Galleons of gold in the family treasury. They are just a number.

Money is money only when it is spent.If the money is not spent, then they are just a burden, which not only does not bring them a higher status, but also invites them to disaster.

But spending money is also a science. It is impossible for them to fly a plane to throw coins directly. In that case, they will really throw coins.

So after discussion, the powerful families in the wizarding world decided to accept Lockhart's suggestion and start the "intermediate trade".

The basic process is that the purebloods use the money earned from Muggles to buy industrial products, and then use magic to make magical products and sell them to wizards abroad.

Of course, in return, they would also buy some special magic products from the other country from foreign wizards, and then sell them to civilians in their own countries.

Although doing so may seem superfluous, it means a lot to purebloods.

Because when processing Muggle industrial products into magical items: they will employ a large number of

Hire civilian wizards as workers and pay them wages.

When a group of people had to sell their labor to them in exchange for these Galleons, they could truly control the wizarding world with money.

To put it mildly, this is called "order", and to put it more substantively, it is called monopoly.

Lockhart has already written to the sponsors, asking them to prepare a batch of their own special products as soon as possible, and he will start a more extensive and in-depth discussion with them depending on the sales volume.

If he can't even handle this first "import and export commodity trading market", Lockhart himself will feel ashamed even if people don't tell him, let alone he promised Dumbledore to make Knockturn Alley from the world. disappeared.

This principle is very clear, but it is a pity that not all pure-blood wizards can understand this, or they are unwilling to make changes after understanding it.

Gemma secretly told Lockhart that there had been a recent schism within the Pureblood Group - her father had made an alliance with Malfoy, Greenglass, Travers, and Slughorn to form a new small group.

Because there are five families in this small group, which is exactly the number of fingers on a human hand, so they named their small group "Golden Hands", and they did it with full style.

And their separatist behavior has naturally earned them the reputation of "traitors" among the snake wizards

In this new small group, the Malfoy family is the wealthiest, because they not only operate grain futures, but also participate in the oil trading led by Lockhart, and they also have some securities transactions. Shares, there are also many Muggles mixed in their family's fief, and their interests are the same as those of the Malfoy family.

Not to mention Slughorn, as a potion expert, he is extraordinary

A member of the Apothecaries' Guild, it was also his idea to use acromander venom as a "localized swelling potion" to sell to Muggle males.As the Grsengrass family is a large traditional herbal medicine grower, the increase in sales of potions can only benefit them, so they also chose to stand with Slughorn.

The Travers family is supposed to be a neutral faction, and their family has a small stake in the oil business, but their interests are more closely tied to Lockhart's policies

"Travers" literally means "Taxers": the family's role in the British wizarding world was to collect taxes for the operation of the Ministry of Magic.Lockhart's reforms can bring a lot of money to the wizarding world and this will also bring about a surge in tax revenue, so it is impossible for this family to oppose "accession to the WTO" and "intermediate trade", even if there is one member of his family The same goes for staying in Azkaban for killing the McKinnons.

In other words, these five families are out-and-out stakeholders, so they all expressed their support for Lockhart's reforms.

The traditional Snake faction on the other side is dominated by the pure-blood families of Burke, Flint, Rozier, Avery, Carlo, Knott, Yaxley and Parkinson.

Among them, Borgin Bock was the most opposed to Lockhart's New Deal, because if the intermediate trade was really implemented, a family like his family that runs traditional magic shops would definitely be hit the hardest.And Flint absolutely does not want telephones, telegrams, airplanes, and postal services to appear in the wizarding world and replace his family's owl business.

As for the others, needless to say, Yaxley’s kind is still a bit of a serious job, and Avery’s family has some land, but Rozier’s and Carlo’s are basically settled down. It's so desolate that only the family's house is left.

The situation of the Parkinson family is also not very good. They have been trying to use the happiness of the family member Pansy Parkinson to marry the Malfoy family, so as to solve the family's plight of heavy debts.The Selwyn family was even reduced to selling the genealogy——Umri ​​in the original book

Qi just pretended to be "pure blood" by pretending that he had a distant relationship with the Selwyn family, and the Selwyn family, who didn't know whether he had received money or wanted power, acquiesced.

As for Knott’s writing style... No one cares about him at all, as if everyone discusses the plot and never cares what the author thinks

During the process of the split of the Snake faction, Mrs. Longbottom of the Lion faction, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Tom Abbott of the Leaky Cauldron Bar watched from the sidelines, neither agreeing nor opposing; He is happy to see their success, watching their jokes with an attitude of watching from the other side; Ollivander is in a detached position, because he believes that no matter who is in power in the end, they all need the magic wand of the Ollivander family—of course He hadn't thought that Voldemort would break the rules so crazily.

After knowing this "secret", Lockhart understood why when he said he wanted Owl Post to provide delivery services, that Marcus Flint actually ignored the "teacher-student friendship" between himself and him and wanted to I have to show my face.

"Thanks for having you, otherwise I really wouldn't know about it." He thankfully said to Gemma.

Gemma Farley looked very happy.

"It's good if you know... Actually, you don't have to worry too much about them. Those guys are just trying to annoy and laugh at others. They have neither the courage nor the ability to do bad things. After more than ten years, they will become Nothing."

As she spoke, she motioned for Lockhart to bend her arm so she could carry him back to the office at the Shrieking Shack, where they had been at Lady Puddiffe's teahouse for a long time.

Lockhart showed his gentlemanly demeanor as she wished, and at the same time recorded all the families she mentioned in a small notebook in his heart.

Sorry, I'm not going to wait more than ten years for them to slowly disappear, because there is no time for that.Lockhart thought.

Obviously, these families will become Voldemort's most loyal after his return.

The subordinates need to find a way to deal with it in advance.