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> Fishing is less profitable for the whole UK than Warhammer. This sounded completely insane to me. I tried to look up numbers and found that Games Workshop br

• bombcar 2y ago
  There's a problem with just directly comparing them - because JKR probably brings in more revenue to the UK than fishing, with Potter copyrights. But most of that revenue goes to JKR, whereas most of the fishing revenue may end up in "working class" people's pockets.
  • 3abiton 2y ago
    > But most of that revenue goes to JKR, whereas most of the fishing revenue may end up in "working class" people's pockets. I am sure JKR has to pay taxes still, which goes back to the government.
    • throw0101c 2y ago
      > I am sure JKR has to pay taxes still, which goes back to the government. Does JKR personally own the copyrights, or have they been sub-licensed to a corporation in (e.g.) Ireland?
      • edm0nd 2y ago
        With the levels of money involved, highly likely its all wrapped in legal fuckery.
        • ForOldHack 2y ago
          https://www.newsweek.com/jk-rowling-making-money-hogwarts-legacy-what-we-know-1777087 https://www.newsweek.com/jk-rowling-making-money-hogwarts-le...
    • bunderbunder 2y ago
      But still, the money that's going straight into working class people's pockets is probably better for the UK in the long run. Don't worry, it will get taxed over and over and over and over again as they pay each other for things. Velocity is one of those critically important concepts that often gets left out of these discussions because it's hard to understand if you haven't formally studied economics because it's all about second order effects. But it's a big part of understanding why, historically speaking, maximizing corporate profits doesn't seem to correlate all that well with overall prosperity trends.
      • tim333 2y ago
        There are quite a lot of people who make money from Harry Potter apart from JKR. People running cinemas, bookshops, making the movies, running the studio tour and so on.
        • bunderbunder 2y ago
          Right. And the more of that that happens, the better for the economy overall. The less of that that happens - implying more of it ends up in JKR's proverbial dragon hoard, not doing much good beyond being an impressive pile of wealth for the dragon to sleep on top of - the less good for the economy overall.
          • ViktorRay 2y ago
            I don’t think your comment is accurate. When rich people get large amounts of money they don’t hoard it like they did in Roman times. That money either goes into the stock market or to a bank. If it’s in the stock market that money is being used in investments that further economic growth. The portion of the leftover money that’s in the bank is then lent out by the bank to others in the forms of loans and so on for purchasing houses, starting business and so on. The idea that the pile of wealth is simply hoarded to be slept on is out of date and not representative of modern economics. Also, as for JK Rowling specifically, she had donated a significant amount of her wealth to charity.
    • raffraffraff 2y ago
      And apparently she really does pay all her taxes (£47m last year, roughly $60m)
  • fwip 2y ago
    JKR's net worth is less than a billion, which means she's probably not raking in over a billion annually.
    • dubiousdabbler 2y ago
      Isn't this because she gives so much to charity?
      • tweetle_beetle 2y ago
        Quoting Wikipedia's source, Forbes estimated her donations were $120 million to date in 2012. However, she co-founded her own charity in 2005, of which she is the president, and I suspect most of it has been donated in that direction. Personally, I'm always dubious of the rich and famous genuinely finding unmet cases for charitable organisations. Especially when they've made a fortune outsourcing being morally dubious to others - she can save children because others are paying her to be allowed to sell low quality merchandise almost certainly made in exploitative conditions. She's not alone, there's many more e.g. Messi donating lots to children's cause through his own charitable organisation after gladly being a global ambassador for unhealthy snacks targeted at children.
        • throwaway48476 2y ago
          During feudalism the rich donated a far larger percent of their assets. The trend has been that the rich donate a smaller percent since then
          • weberer 2y ago
            Are you counting tithes as donations?
            • throwaway48476 2y ago
              Tithe/charity/donations/taxes. It's fungible from a socio economic perspective.
  • Symbiote 2y ago
    The comparison was with Warhammer, not Rowling. Warhammer requires designers, moulding experts, warehouse staff and so on. Games Workshop is a public company, in case you want to look up their accounts for the comparison.
  • bojan 2y ago
    I do wonder how much of fishery money ends up in the working class pockets. I assume the surviving companies survived because they have economy of scale, meaning most of the profits goes to corporate. If somebody has the numbers, I'd like to know.
  • pavlov 2y ago
    There are lots of JKR-adjacent industries that employ working class people. The Harry Potter World theme park in London has over two million visitors annually. That tourism must be more economically significant than fishing for cod.
  • ModernMech 2y ago
    > But most of that revenue goes to JKR, whereas most of the fishing revenue may end up in "working class" people's pockets. What an amazing argument to tax the rich!
  • chgs 2y ago
    “Working class” fishermen sold their rights years ago. same as “working class” farmers who sell a field for a couple of million quid
• eyko 2y ago
  It's also worth considering that certain industries (fisheries and agriculture for instance) are subsidised. It's in our national interest to maintain production capacity, so profits are the least of our concerns. Both the UK and the EU's agricultural sectors are heavily subsidised mainly for this reason. It's cheaper to import than to produce locally, especially with our environmental standards and targets, but we need to keep producing. More so in the current geopolitical climate. And whilst nobody wants to risk being starved to submission, it's also equally important to promote more profitable sectors, and tax accordingly, so that we can support our more strategic sectors. I wouldn't say we're doing a good job at that for what its worth.
  • flir 2y ago
    While not disagreeing with you, I don't think we've done a great job of maintaining fisheries.
    • wongarsu 2y ago
      Also, continuing overfishing is a terrible long-term strategy. Sure, we will have the boats, fishermen and infrastructure around fishing, but that's of no help if the fish are gone.
      • immibis 2y ago
        Politics isn't about good long-term planning - it's about accountability sinks. This decade: "We're not the ones trying to steal your fishing jobs!" Next decade: "It's not our fault there aren't fish!"
        • potato3732842 2y ago
          You missed the "you can fix it with money though, and our friends are just the people to give the money to" step that comes after each problem statement.
    • eyko 2y ago
      Agreed, and the same goes for most strategic sectors: energy, agriculture, animal husbandry, semiconductors, communications, space, the infrastructure to support all these, education, etc.
• AndrewStephens 2y ago
  > Games Workshop brings in > 0.5 billion in revenue (!!) I had no idea that Warhammer was such a huge industry - they must sell almost 600 sets a quarter.
  • gmueckl 2y ago
    This is either a joke that flies over my head or there are a few zeroes missing. Which is it?
    • miningape 2y ago
      Look up the price of a single small unpainted figure. You'll be shocked.
    • smadge 2y ago
      The joke is that Warhammer sets are expensive.
      • wkat4242 2y ago
        I'm kinda surprised people aren't just buying a 3D printer. I print stuff all the time. I'm not into this kind of game but if I were I wouldn't pay that much for a piece of plastic I can print at home for 3 bucks.
        • dharmab 2y ago
          My group is 3D printing most of our stuff for beer and pretzels games. But official tournaments have a rule where your miniatures have to be official products. Note that a standard printer won't be anywhere near as nice quality as official models. You need a resin printer for that, which requires ventilation, some basic PPE, and additional labor to clean and cure the prints correctly. Not something you want to do with small children or pets in the house. We resin print most of our models. We use FDM for blocky things like tanks and buildings, though. And some complex or very large models can't be printed (although we sometimes use alternatives for those). Warhammer is an unusually expensive game, too. Other games like One Page Rules will sell you STLs to self-print, or charge very reasonable prices for pro-printed minis. You can buy a 2-player starter kit for OPR for about the same money as one WH40K unit.
• iamacyborg 2y ago
  What’s even more astounding is that most of Games Workshop’s manufacturing remains in the UK.
  • 936936 2y ago
    Not only that, they are actively expanding their manufacturing because their revenue is limited by supply. Their factories are running 24/7 and some products are still consistently out of stock.
• jachee 2y ago
  > … that they don' even paint for you Of course. That way they can sell you the official paints. Fortunately, it seems they’ve dropped that you’re required to use the official paints if you want to enter a sanctioned tournament.
  • gattr 2y ago
    I'm not into Warhammer, but out of curiosity, how did they check that? Scrape a sample off each figurine and run it through a mass spectrometer or something?
    • dharmab 2y ago
      Official paint was never a requirement AFAIK. Parent comment has probably confused the Battle Ready rule, which basically says the model and base must be completely painted with multiple colors and shading, but doesn't care about what brands of paints you use.
• yellowapple 2y ago
  The UK ain't alone in that either. California's agricultural sector is one of the largest in the world (let alone in the US) in terms of revenue and output, in many cases providing most/all of national and even global supplies of various fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Virtually all American almonds and broccoli, 90% or more of American dates and avocados, top producer of peaches and dairy products, the list goes on. And yet, California's entire agricultural sector only totals to $50 billion in annual revenue. There are multiple tech and entertainment companies in California that individually surpass that, in some cases (like Apple and Amazon) by an order of magnitude.
  • TulliusCicero 2y ago
    Nitpick, but while Amazon does have offices in California, it's headquartered in Washington State.
  • Workaccount2 2y ago
    This is so key to understand because it illuminates how not every job is equal in raw value. You cannot have a drying rack manufacturer in the US that pays a bunch of workers $35/hr. There simply is not enough value in drying racks to achieve this. This is what is lost on the populist crowd. They compare themselves to high value workers (i.e. workers that produce a lot of raw economic value per hour), and then want to legislate that low value work pays on the same order. To put that into simple terms, they want to make it so that producing a single $20 bill per hours pays them $30 an hour. No matter what, that isn't going to work out well.
    • 9rx 2y ago
      Value isn't static, of course. Take the food that was brought up earlier. Food saw a real increase in value by around 30% from 2019 to 2024. A couple of destructive weather events, fertilizer scarcity, and war in the Ukrainian breadbasket shook people enough to think that maybe they shouldn't take food quite so for granted. Drying racks aren't considered terribly valuable today, but if you lock up manufacturing to a single country and impose a number of other restrictions, sentiment can change quickly. The latest episode of Ted Lasso might not seem so important anymore.
• coldtea 2y ago
  And then you try to eat figurines, and find out they're not as digestable
• test6554 2y ago
  A game that is not on a computer... So they don't even calculate damage or move distance for you. And you have to buy each figurine and paint it yourself... And people are spending all their money on this? That's why we're not mining asteroids right now? I feel like people could just use AR glasses for this and spend nothing but their time.
  • gond 2y ago
    You approaching this the wrong way. What you are listing as disadvantages is, for the most part, the USP. For example, if you are in the target group, you buy it exactly because it does not uses AR glasses; If you are proficient, you are sleepwalking the damage/distance/all other calculations within seconds in your head, you don’t even have to take a single look at any rule book. The biggest selling point, however is: there are others sitting in front of you, it can be very competitive, you can see the reaction, like in chess.
  • dharmab 2y ago
    > And you have to buy each figurine and paint it yourself... This is a _feature_ for the target audience. There's a sizable chunk of the playerbase who enjoy painting more than the game. I even have friends who paint these miniatures professionally as their side gig. > And people are spending all their money on this? No. Most people are playing at home on a budget, similar to other board games. A very tiny fraction of the playerbase plays competitively and have larger collections. > I feel like people could just use AR glasses for this and spend nothing but their time. You can play this game in Tabletop Simulator, which supports VR. It's _far_ less fun than playing in person with real objects. TTS is mostly used to test strategies before committing to buying the required miniatures. As sibling comment mentions, the damage calculation is rather simplistic, and it's an exciting moment around the table when you roll a fistful of dice, kind of like gambling. I'm not even that proficient of a player and I can calculate a 17 dice roll attack while sleep deprived at 3AM, no computer needed.