{"id":4905,"date":"2019-03-13T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=4905"},"modified":"2019-03-11T14:22:01","modified_gmt":"2019-03-11T21:22:01","slug":"mark-reads-making-money-chapter-5-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2019\/03\/mark-reads-making-money-chapter-5-part-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Making Money’: Chapter 5, Part II"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the second half of the fifth chapter of Making Money<\/i>, Moist continues to grapple with a rapidly changing world of his own making. Intrigued? Then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time for Mark to read Discworld<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not a video-watcher (some people aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t!), then let me start this off by saying that I witnessed a queue forming in Union Station in D.C. not too long ago. It formed next to the queue I was in for an upcoming train that would take me back home. I didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what it was for, and then I overhead someone asking another person if the line was for the Acela train.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Their answer: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153What are you in line for?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

So yeah, this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t fiction at all. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122VE WITNESSED IT MYSELF. Did that person have a train to catch and just assumed that was a line? WHO KNOWS. What if they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re still<\/i> in line? The world may never know.<\/p>\n

Anyway, that bit of fun aside: LORD, this is escalating so quickly. No sooner has the bank opened to everyone\u00e2\u20ac\u201dsomething Moist had hinted at doing pretty early on\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat they get four thousand dollars worth of deposits, not counting Harry King. The bank only valued the well-off and the wealthy, , but Moist brilliantly points out how meaningful it is that there are more<\/i> of the poor, and that pooled together, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re worthy, too. He sets the threshold for a deposit low, and they only earn a percent of interest per year, but that doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t deserve to have a place to keep their money safe. And then there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s people like Dibbler, who are certainly not rich, but for whom advancement exists just out of reach. For the length of this series, that man has had his tray from where he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sold… well… food? Something like food? Something that some people eat some of the time? And he just needs a relatively small amount of money\u00e2\u20ac\u201djust $15\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto be able to upgrade to a cart. And look, this is so perfectly in line with a lot of what Pratchett has talked about before, like with Vimes\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theory on boots. Sometimes, you just need a little<\/i> help to get ahead, but that little bit is denied over and over again. That little bit stays just out of reach. So there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a part of me that hopes that Dibbler does<\/i> improve his business! Like, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t expect his food to get any better, but maybe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll sell more! Maybe he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll get to cover more ground with a cart he can push instead of wearing a tray.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Still think his food\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be the worst, but I expect nothing less of CMOT Dibbler.<\/p>\n

So, Harry King. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been a hot minute since we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve seen him in a Discworld<\/i> book, no? (I know he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s been mentioned a few times, but he hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t had a major scene since The Truth<\/i>.) I think this scene exists to demonstrate why Mr. Bent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s policies and preferences for running the bank just don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work. Well, they do<\/i> work, but there can never be growth or expansion. Harry King has fifty thousand dollars in the bank; that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s IMMENSE. Yet Mr. Bent spends what little time he has in front of Harry King making it clear that he doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t want the bank to lend any money. Just because King is hard to be around, or gruff, or aggressive, or smelly, doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean that he isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t going to pay back his loan at a rate that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll benefit the bank while he gets to make advances in his business. Moist is clever like that, and that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one of the many things the bank has been missing at this point. He understood Harry King and recognized that he was a huge<\/i> part of the city. Why wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the bank want to be behind whatever ventures he was planning? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a sensible choice, but Mr. Bent didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t consider him as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153deserving\u00e2\u20ac\u009d of it, despite that he probably had more money than most of the other clients.\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just as excited to see what the money-making process itself is going to turn out like. Of course, because Pratchett loves throwing wrenches into plans, there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a huge complication at the end of this chapter: the best person for the job of designing the bills to prevent counterfeiting? Yeah, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Owlswick Jenkins, the very guy Moist testified against. AND WHO WILL BE EXECUTED SHORTLY. Okay, so\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 how the hell is he gonna manage this?<\/i> Break Owlswick out? Get Vetinari to intervene? Actually, Moist shuts down that option on the page, so I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know???<\/p>\n

But look, y\u00e2\u20ac\u2122all. LOOK. There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s one thing in this chapter that is more interesting than LITERALLY EVERYTHING ELSE. I picked up on a few strange clues that there was more to Mr. Bent than there seems to be. Early on, I had wondered if he was a vampire. I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t believe that anymore, but once I learned that he lived at Mrs. Cake\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s??? OKAY, WHAT!!!! So, there is<\/i> something there, but Pratchett is being suspiciously vague about providing details. Mr. Bent likes numbers; he has no sense of humor. He had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153bad times\u00e2\u20ac\u009d before, but we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know what they were. He adjusts his clock before heading to work, and he has a wardrobe. A wardrobe with a SECRET in it. He keeps it padlocked shut??? What the fuck is in there?\u00c2\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even worse, it seems very much true that the Lavishes KNOW WHAT THIS PAST IS. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what Cosmo threatens Mr. Bent with, and the scary part is that I can tell that Mr. Bent is desperate for no one<\/i> to ever find out what he was. Problem is that none of these details add up into anything for me. Like, I keep going over them and nothing sensible jumps out. Mrs. Cake doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t even know!<\/p>\n

UGH WHAT IS HAPPENING.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/youtu.be\/Kjs5Me5qJ7g<\/p>\n

Mark Links Stuff<\/b><\/p>\n

– 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>If you’d like to stay up-to-date on all announcements regarding my books, sign up for my newsletter<\/a>! DO IT.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"