Imagine what the world would have been like without magic.
1. Magic creates and gives evil people’s power
If it weren’t for magic, the world obviously would not have gone through much of the strife it did. The most obvious example is the world being destroyed twice, once by Durza’s great blast, and second by the Cursebeard War. If not for magic, these tragic losses of life could not have happened.
The less obvious impact is giving evil people power. You could say the same through technology, but what differs magic from tech is accessibility and availability. Magic is accessible to a select few, and those few can become extremely powerful, and as the saying goes, “power corrupts”. Compare that to say, a gun. A gun is powerful, yes, but anyone can gain access to or use a gun, thus keeping the playing field equal. You could say, “blame the user, not the magic” but magic is the problem. It practically exists only to create oppression and violence, since it has next to zero practical applications, unlike most weaponry devised by man.
This is different from a gun, which can have reduced production or the forcible banning of them, removing them from the equation. It also limits how powerful a single individual can be. The most powerful and richest individual is still limited by the amount of firepower they can possess, meaning that instead of a single person taking over, it takes groups, which are more stable and equal, and usually have to appease the population through some other way than violence.
For example, in AA you could take over entire islands with your character, and force them to pay taxes to you. Now, does that sound like something a single person could do to any country or city, throughout history? Of course not. Magic is why pirates and other dark wizards could become so powerful, being able to actually commit war on what is otherwise a functioning government ignoring the One-Shot Pirates and other pirate clans like it, since they had created what were governments in their own rights.
2. Magic creates inequality
Magic creates inequality through the fact that those born with a stronger magic power create a hierarchy, with those who can’t practise at the bottom, while those that possess great amounts are at the top. You can even see this in the government, since only magic users are let into positions of power, like all the admirals, every One-Shot Commander and of course, everyone in the universally hated Magic Council.
Now, to compare this to say wealth in our world, would be a bad comparison to make. For one thing, magic and wealth both carry down, as seen with Angel Creed inheriting her father’s git or fire magic(correct me if I’m wrong). This is made worse by the fact that magic power is of course everything in this world, meaning it can create some pretty skewed societies, with a small minority of extremely powerful magic users controlling the majority of non-magic users, as seen with the A.G. or the One-Shot Pirates. This could presumably lead to family tees turning into family circles, as wizards try to outdo each other to create a better heir, though this is leaning into theory at this point.
Wealth can also be redistributed. I’m sure you’ve seen the memes, to eat the rich and re-distribute their wealth, but the thing is, you can’t do that with magic. They have power and they keep that power for the rest of their life, meaning the only way to stop them is to kill them, leading to more and more violence, which was seen with the war that killed 40% of wizards and multiple gods back when Aurem was needed to create magic.
This, coupled with the fact that wizards can live up to 1000 years, and curse users are immortal, means that this can lead to systems and people mired deep in inequality. this isn’t to say that our world is any better at this, but at least ours is based on trivial things such as gender, sex, race and sexual orientation, with the only major one being wealth, which in my opinion is probably one of the biggest issues of our time.
3. Magic is inherently destructive
As I touched upon in my first note, magic in an of its self is inherently evil to a degree. It destroys, and since the material you perform magic with disappears, it’s impossible to create anything with it(I guess the new greeks do it, not sure how though). This means that magic is only able to be used to destroy and kill. This is the same as with guns, but as I previously noted, guns can be controlled; magic cannot.
It also allows the usage of destruction far beyond what a normal human could do. A normal human can not destroy a huge tower made of stone in 1 or 2 minutes, but an explosion, gold or even a high-level paper magic-user can with ease, essentially giving access to what are essentially military-grade explosives to a civilian, at best, and I’m sure you can see why it’s a bad thing. This is even more pronounced when the user in question is themselves evil, but I digress.
4. Closing Statements
Now that we’ve seen that magic is clearly selfish, destructive and dangerous, even in the hands of good, how can we in good conscience support it?
EDIT:
Concerning enchanting and magical weapons, the same argument applies. The fact that anyone could just find Morock’s superpowered weapon and cause mass mayhem with it is probably not the best thing that could happen.
EDIT: Making a second topic updating this a bit.