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He'd owled Hermione, who had gone back to live with her parents until September, to ask how the Muggles managed to make so much stuff. She'd asked her mother, and sent back what amounted to a short essay detailing mining, machinery, smelting, and, the production line. Milo had scoffed at the idea of 1st level non-caster NPCs working together to create goods en masse—until he did the math. Ninety-nine unskilled Commoners, and one with 4 ranks and Skill Focus in the proper Craft skill, with one set of Masterwork Tools, all using Aid Another (which would give each a 50% chance to add +2) would have a colossal +108 Craft bonus. Using Quick Crafting, higher bonuses would lead to exponential returns. This group could make around thirteen thousand silver pieces worth of goods in a week—compared to the seven silver piece weekly wage they could expect working alone. With other bonuses, such as those from feats, better tools, or a decent Intelligence bonus, that number would increase dramatically. Sure, a Wizard could simply cast Fabricate and turn any raw material into any finished product, but Fabricate required a 9th-level Wizard, and how many thousands of level one Commoners were there per 9th-level Wizard?

That led Milo down another track. A horrifying track. It came to him when he tried to explain the differences between the Muggles here and those in Myra (City of Light! City of Magic!). He didn't know anything about the state of Muggles outside of England—or, to be honest, outside of Little Whinging—so generalizations were risky. But, even assuming that England was the wealthiest, most powerful empire on this plane, when compared to the Azel Empire, of which Myra (City of Light! City of Magic!) was capital, there were horrifying conclusions. Azel was one of the wealthiest human empires from his world. Nevertheless, its average citizens—the NPC commoners—lived in a near-perpetual state of poverty and fear. They had to rely on the happenstance of a passing party of adventurers for protection, and could hardly afford food, much less shelter, as a simple one-room wooden cottage went for 1,000gp (10,000 days' wage) anywhere in the realm. Most people lived in lean-tos built out of quarterstaffs and clubs, thatched with holly and mistletoe, and the other few free items in the book. Their only options for escape were to become another random encounter—that is, banditry—or adventuring. Both options offered the chance at a fortune, but came at the cost of having a terrible retirement plan (the business end of a passing Paladin's longsword or a Red Dragon's stomach, respectively). But the Muggles here, in England, had food, safety, and homes. They had a competent city watch. It was then that Milo realized the reason for it: magic. The wizards here kept their magic a secret for reasons that seemed entirely selfish: the Muggles would never stop bothering them, because they would want magical solutions to all of their problems. In Milo's world, magic was no secret. It was available, it was open. There was a magical solution to any problem—for a price. There was no need to develop a superior plow when you could hire a Druid to cast Plant Growth. The reason was clear, and it would keep Milo awake at night: magic throttled innovation. In History of Magic, Milo had learned that this world had passed through an era that roughly resembled his world. But the medieval era, as it was called, came and went in a few hundred years. A few hundred years was a blink. It was window-dressing. It was a rounding error. Adventurers routinely investigated ruins of civilizations hundreds of thousands of years old that had access to comparable—or even, if their traps were any indication, superior—mundane technology. Hells, Malbutorius the Dark, an epic-level Lich with a soul blacker than the sun isn't, had been a thorn in the side of humanoid civilization since the dawn of time. Even the Elves couldn't remember a time when he didn't exist. Milo's world was locked in stasis, and the only reasonable explanation for it was magic.

http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8096183/37/