{"id":4888,"date":"2019-02-22T05:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T13:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4888"},"modified":"2019-02-17T11:33:57","modified_gmt":"2019-02-17T19:33:57","slug":"mark-reads-making-money-chapter-2-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/02\/mark-reads-making-money-chapter-2-part-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads &#8216;Making Money&#8217;: Chapter 2, Part I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the second chapter of <i>Making Money<\/i>, this is the biggest, messiest disaster imaginable, and I feel like it still doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t properly describe this. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read <i>Discworld<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>So, I made this point on video, but I wanted to open this with the same thought. In a few ways, this journey is paralleling some of what Moist went through in <i>Going Postal<\/i>. But I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that as a criticism that this is repetitive, because it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not. Oh, no, this is perhaps an even more insidious disaster because, technically speaking, it <i>works<\/i>. The Post Office had been abandoned, the main building was left in ruins, and both Groat and Stanley were vestiges of its former glory. It barely functioned at all.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>The Bank and the Mint <i>do<\/i> function, and they certainly have customers, though I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll speak more on that at the end. So it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not that the Mint doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t operate or that the building has fallen apart. Rather, through multiple \u00e2\u20ac\u0153traditions\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and countless strict policies, the Mint has not updated how it is run in <i>hundreds<\/i> of years. And its policies make a weird sense, or, as Pratchett puts it, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an \u00e2\u20ac\u0153illogical logic\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to them, but that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that this is how it should run in perpetuity. So, let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s talk about the Royal Mint, because holy <i>shit<\/i>, does Moist have his work cut out for him. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m going to loop back around to the gold thing at the end for a reason, which means we gotta start with this:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Its main hall was three stories high, and picked up some gray daylight from the rows of barred windows. And, in terms of primary architecture, that was it. Everything else was sheds.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m gonna go out on a limb here and say that a <i>random assortment of sheds<\/i> is not a sound business plan? Or safety plan? Oh my gods, the whole time I was reading this, I kept thinking about how dangerous that room would be if it caught on fire??? One thing Pratchett does masterfully well here is convey how dank and sad this place is. It is the idea of a rut writ large in a massive room. These people have done this job one way their whole lives (or for <i>eighteen generations<\/i>, in the case of Mr. Shady the Eighteenth), and there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s never been a single attempt to ever try anything different. That includes wages, and that includes the absolutely UNNECESSARY way in which money is made. Look, I did find something cool in Mr. Bent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assertion that coins were valuable in part because they could be reused so many times. (That also made me want to apply hand sanitizer, but whatever.) I get why they existed and continue to exist\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 sort of. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m interested in how coins or the existence of them benefit the poor, too, so I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if there were any studies done possible side affects of Canada\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s decision to stop minting the one-cent coin. (It wasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t <i>all<\/i> coins, as I had said on video.)<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>However, once Shady detailed all the coins they made and how many of them cost more to produce than they were ever worth, this was\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 absurd!!! Why??? are you even making them like that? And then Moist finds out that there are families around the city who <i>also<\/i> make coins\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthey\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re called outworkers\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand that the only security around this process is the threat of execution by hanging. THAT\u00e2\u20ac\u2122S IT. Which is both grossly excessive and NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. Apparently, both Bent and Shady believe that these families are loyal enough that they aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t stealing, but\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all, this is a bad, bad idea. Couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t someone easily take advantage of <i>anyone<\/i> who had the knowledge of how to produce coins? Let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s assume I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m wrong and that, in this case, Bent is correct. That means he utilizes a system of terror in order to run security. Any possible misdeed is met with a hanging, right? Or does the worker who is on the security shift actually <i>do<\/i> anything? (Something tells me that truncheon hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t ever been used, except for maybe swatting at flies.)<\/p>\n<p>But here\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s my other major worry. Yes, the Royal Mint is not a well-oiled machine, but it is a machine nonetheless. What of the <i>other<\/i> people working it? There is no glamour in making money, and Pratchett paints a portrait of misery here. These workers don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem happy, they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to have experienced any financial success, and Bent seems perfectly fine with this arrangement. So let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s focus on his words about gold for a moment:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is the one true metal, pure and unsullied,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d said Bent. His left eye twitched. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is the metal that never fell from grace.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Bent <i>fascinates<\/i> me. For a man so obsessed with perfection, why is he okay with the haphazard and imperfect state of the Mint itself? Or does this speak to Bent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s view of <i>people<\/i>? Because I can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget that Vetinari warned that the Bank was flawed due to trappings of wealth and class, and I wonder if Bent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s bizarre worship of gold is meant as commentary on this sort of thing. Does he believe the world is ordered and perfect when everyone is in their right place? Did he come from a world that was, to his eyes, imperfect? This feels like something <i>more<\/i> than just a financier\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s obsession with the gold standard, you know?<\/p>\n<p>I am\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 very hesitant to meet the current chairman. Oh, <i>no<\/i>.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/youtu.be\/4w4tQJ6EGHI<\/p>\n<p><b>Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&#8211; <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markoshiro.com\/blog\/2018\/12\/19\/the-anger-is-a-gift-paperback-edition-is-out-may-7-2019\">The paperback edition of my debut, ANGER IS A GIFT, is now up for pre-order!<\/a> It comes out on May 7, 2019.\u00c2\u00a0<\/strong><strong>If you&#8217;d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, <a href=\"http:\/\/eepurl.com\/ey636\">sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the first half of the second chapter of Making Money, this is the biggest, messiest disaster imaginable, and I feel like it still doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t properly describe this. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[451],"tags":[558,463,248],"class_list":["post-4888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-discworld","tag-making-money","tag-mark-reads-discworld","tag-terry-pratchett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The path to wp-cache-phase1.php in wp-content/advanced-cache.php must be fixed! -->