|
I don't know. I didn't feel that Making Money matched up with Going Postal. It was good, but the plot just wasn't compelling in the way that Postal's was -- it lacked tension, on a lot of levels. I felt like it had been written more to be another Moist book than because he had another compelling Moist story to tell. I believe the Golem Standard was a reference to Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, i.e., the doctrine that the wealth of nations comes from work, not from gold.
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2007 01:32
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 21:38 |
|
|
Nomenklatura posted:You would be referring to the labour theory of value, would you not? It had another rather famous person espousing it. German guy? Big beard? Where on earth are you getting the idea that Reacher Gilt was an objectivist/libertarian? That's loving ridiculous. He was a parody of the Enron / Worldcom folks and other corporate "pirates." Hence the parrot that kept sqauwking out "twelve and a half percent," the historical rate of usury. Adam Smith's central point in Wealth of Nations was that the wealth of nations did not stem from gold (according to the mercantilist theories of the time) but from productive labor. Marx's work built on that theory, but it wasn't what Marx was about. Pratchett's channelling Adam Smith in this book, not Marx. Seriously. Marx wouldn't exactly be a fan of machine-golem slave labor, think about it. Neither Going Postal nor Making Money have anything to do with Objectivism or Libertarianism, except insofar as some libertarians are foolish enough to espouse the gold standard. Admittedly that's more political than Pratchett usually gets (the only other real example I can think of is the Gonne) but none of his books are Bioshock and you're forcing your own reading onto the text if you think they are. Calenth fucked around with this message at 22:40 on Sep 29, 2007 |
|
#
¿
Sep 29, 2007 22:26
|
|
|
Eela6 posted:I think you're reading too much into it. I assumed it was a straight-up homage to Long John Silver. Actually you're probably right on that, esp. since now that I check instead of relying on memory, it's 12% for usury, and that's only in the U.S. and only since the '80s. Either way, though, he's a pirate, not a libertarian or objectivist. Calenth fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Sep 30, 2007 |
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2007 02:46
|
|
|
Nomenklatura posted:REACHER GILT. A guy spending an entire book screaming about government interference in private enterprise. No, he spends the whole book being a pirate. It's excruciatingly obvious who the parallels are too -- the Enron/Worldcom folks also blathered about private enterprise. Not everyone who says the words "private enterprise" is a libertarian or objectivist. quote:Oh, and the "productive theory of labour"? Yeah, that's Marx. No, sorry, Marx. Maybe Smith earlier, but 9 out of 10 economists agree: if you're into LtoV, you're probably a Marxist. They'd also note that Pratchett stepped squarely into the lump-of-labour fallacy, but that's besides the point. It's the Discworld, not Samuelson's Economics. Do you know what the labor theory of value is? Like I said before -- it's extremely loving obvious that Pratchett is referring to Adam Smith here, not Marx. The entire point of Smith's Wealth of Nations was that the wealth of nations derives from work and productive labor, not gold stockpiles. That's what the title is there for. quote:The judicious operations of banking, by substituting paper in the room of a great part of this gold and silver, enables the country to convert a great part of this dead stock into active and productive stock. quote:The real price of everything, what everything really costs to the man who wants to acquire it, is the toil and trouble of acquiring it. What everything is really worth to the man who has acquired it, and who wants to dispose of it or exchange it for something else, is the toil and trouble which it can save to himself, and which it can impose upon other people. What is bought with money or with goods is purchased by labour as much as what we acquire by the toil of our own body. That money or those goods indeed save us this toil. They contain the value of a certain quantity of labour which we exchange for what is supposed at the time to contain the value of an equal quantity. Labour was the first price, the original purchase-money that was paid for all things. It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased; and its value, to those who possess it, and who want to exchange it for some new productions, is precisely equal to the quantity of labour which it can enable them to purchase or command. Historically prior to Adam Smith, the wealth of nations was measured by gold stockpiles (to oversimplify a little). This philosophy was referred to as mercantilism. Adam Smith's revolutionary point was that this wasn't true; wealth derived from productive labor, not gold stockpiles. Pratchett mocks this even as far back as The Color of Magic, when the Patrician asks Rincewind what would happen if everyone in Ankh-Morpork had gold, and Rincewind ignorantly replies "uh, we'd all be rich?" quote:Edit: holy poo poo, wait, you think Discworld isn't political? The politics are barely concealed! Did you even read Interesting Times, for example, or did you miss that half the damned book was Rincewind going on and on about how tyranny and dictatorship works? The politics are generally very conventional and mainstream; he doesn't get controversial, and he doesn't get into political theory. He'll pick issues here and there, like women in the military or gun control, but he isn't a theorist and he doesn't address political theory in his writing the way that someone like, say, China Mieville or Heinlein does. Or, for that matter, Ayn Rand. Yes, the books get political, but they aren't Bioshock. Calenth fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Sep 30, 2007 |
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2007 13:51
|
|
|
peanut- posted:
Yeah. Pratchett's kinda stuck right now because his best characters (Granny Weatherwax, Vimes, Carrot) have pretty much completed their character arcs. You can tell he's trying to start new "franchises" with Moist and Tiffany Aching.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2007 14:23
|
|
|
Grum posted:With Weatherwax, Vimes, Carrot and Moist I felt they were really part of the 'overall' Discworld story but Tiffany Aching felt like it just took place there. Like when an author writes a story set in another's fantasy world. That's a good insight, you're right, it does have that feel. I think it's because the tone is different since they're children's books, and the action all takes place in a completely new and un-crazy part of the Disc (i.e., a big open field without distinguishing characteristics, not Ankh-Morpork and not Lancre).
|
|
#
¿
Sep 30, 2007 18:04
|
|
|
Nomenklatura posted:Reacher. Gilt. Do you know what the word "gilt" means? It means "gold-covered" or something thathas been faked to look like gold. Reacher Gilt -- someone grasping for gold, who's also somewhat fake. It isn't a galt reference. Hence the "reacher" part. quote:gild 1 (gĭld) Pronunciation Key He's named "reacher gilt" because he's a Grasping Fake. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with objectivism. As before -- Discworld isn't Bioshock. quote:The man is the living, breathing, Discworld version of a Randroid. If he turned out to be a liar, a cheat, and a pirate, No, he isn't. You're being an ideologue. As others have pointed out, the doctrine he's spouting is pre-adam-smith Mercantilist rhetoric. They used a lot of the same rhetoric. (It's also worth noting that Reacher always makes those speeches as obvious-to-the-reader lies -- it's quite obvious he doesn't believe it himself). He's just a con man who uses some market-oriented rhetoric. The book is very obviously a critique of things like Enron and Worldcom, but Ayn Rand isn't here. Calenth fucked around with this message at 14:27 on Oct 1, 2007 |
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2007 14:22
|
|
|
Mukaikubo posted:He isn't the only one insisting that there is only a single possible interpretation of the character. Here I always thought that part of the great thing about Pratchett was that things could be taken on several different levels, but multiple people in here are treating a fairly reasonable interpretation as though it was objectively (ho ho ho) incorrect. Ferrinus posted:
Don't mean at all to be suggesting that multiple readings aren't possible. They are. I just think Nomenklatura's reading of Going Postal as a discworld version of Bioshock is invalid and incorrect, because, as Ferrinus points out, Gilt just doesn't act remotely like an Ayn Rand character. Everything that Nomenklatura points out as "omg ayn rand" is better explained by "corporate pirate," and the "corporate pirate" also explains other things that the Ayn Rand reading doesn't, like the parrot. On top of that, there are elements that would be necessary in an Ayn Rand parody -- like Gilt building the clacks himself then dynamiting it or something -- that are simply absent from the book. It's not that other readings aren't possible, it's that there's not enough "there" there to support his reading. I'll grant the "who is Reacher Gilt" as a possible oblique Rand reference, but there's still not enough there to read Postal as an attack on Objectivism -- it's just an attack on con men. Nomenklatura posted:Actually, the Discworld has become one of the most brilliant and most comprehensive commentaries on modern society out there. That's why it's popular; He's brilliant, and it's brilliant, because it reminds people of the world they live in, while at the same time being drawn in broad enough strokes that everybody can get it. I didn't say that he didn't comment on politics. I said he wasn't an ideologue. These are different things. It's possible to hold a wide variety of political views without being a doctrinaire (Marxist, Objectivist, whatever). And Pratchett isn't -- his views come across pretty clearly as mainstream-british-left-liberal, which is fine, but he's not an ideologue and his works aren't ideological. On the contrary, they're pretty balanced, which is part of why they have such widespread appeal. Politically, they're mainstream, and they never really get that controversial politically. Calenth fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Oct 2, 2007 |
|
#
¿
Oct 1, 2007 22:38
|
|
|
Copernic posted:But that makes no sense. Perhaps they'll be unemployed. But starving and underhoused? The golems are capable of growing all the food and building all the housing. The golems really represent a world of no scarcity. I can accept that scarcity is an important thing because it forces us to be productive, create new technology, and otherwise grow the civilization. But it's not *all* bad to have an untiring army of workers who can do everything for you. I think Pratchett just got his economics wrong. And didn't want a post-scarcity economy forever changing the discworld. I disagree with the guy above who said Moving Pictures was the worst discworld novel; it was good if only because it introduced Gaspode, who might be my favorite character on the Disc. The worst discworld novel was Monstrous Regiment -- I think i've read every published discworld novel, and it's the only one i've read that was just a flat out artistic failure, predictable, trite, and boring, a bad novel.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 15, 2007 01:53
|
|
|
Grum posted:Sorry I just wanted to repeat the question because of your response to it, I never managed to finish Eric and I love Monstrous Regiment. What did you like about Monstrous Regiment? I just found it extremely predictable -- I wasn't a quarter of the way through the book before I guessed what the big "surprise" at the end was going to be. And why do people not like equal rites? I mean, it's one of the earliest discworld books so deserves some slack, it has decent pacing, a decent plot, good characters, things happen that are surprises, etc.
|
|
#
¿
Oct 16, 2007 02:20
|
|
|
The Tiffany Aching books are also maturing in tone somewhat as Tiffany gets older. You really see that in Wintersmith especially.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 16, 2007 02:41
|
|
|
Vetinari isn't ever going to step down; as has been pointed out by many characters, even if he died, getting him to stay dead is an entirely separate question. I think people are approaching the question the wrong way though -- it's not "who would vetinari appoint as successor" but rather "who would end up in charge when the dust settled." If Vetinari actually died and nobody was in charge, the first thing everyone in Ankh-Morpork would do was riot. Vimes and Carrot would stop the riot. The mob would probably try to crown Carrot, Carrot would refuse the job and defer to Vimes, and Vimes would be left holding the bag whether he wanted to or not. Moist could be a monkey wrench; I'm not sure whether he'd try to engage in a mass swindle of the whole city, or run away the second there was dirt on the coffin. At some point I'd like to see Carrot and Moist get into a charm conflict. It'd be interesting. I think at the end of the novel, Vetinari would come back, as a Vampire, and Vimes would "Go Spare," as Nobby puts it.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2008 14:57
|
|
|
Slime posted:Everyone knows Carrot is the true king. He just chooses to ignore it. Yeah, at one point Nobby says something like "We've got an heir to the throne, it's Carrot, he has a birthmark and everything, everyone knows that." It's in the scene i Feet of Clay where Dragon King of Arms is introducing Nobby to the social order.
|
|
#
¿
Sep 9, 2008 17:54
|
|
|
ThaGhettoJew posted:She can't be going on with that. Granny's doing better in the Aching books than in, say, Carpe Jugulum. It would make some thematic sense to do it in the coming-of-age books, but if Terry's going to kill her off at all I would suspect it to be in a "regular" book instead of the YA line. And yeah, get the first one. Tiffany is only 9, but it's the most fun of the three. The thing is, Granny's been fighting off Death in every book, and with every book she gets progressively older and older and older; old age is the only thing left she hasn't been able to beat. But Terry has pretty much taken Granny Weatherwax as far as she can go -- there's really nothing left for her to beat at this point. The Aching books are a good way to use the Granny Weatherwax character without making her into some sort of discworld version of a Super-Saiyan. I don't think Pratchett will kill Granny off but doubt we'll see another book with her as the main character.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 6, 2008 20:03
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 5, 2024 21:38 |
|
|
Darknyte posted:It's like he wasn't not sure what direction he wanted to take Discworld in at this point. I like moving pictures and don't get the dislike. It reminds me of Soul Music -- it kinda shoehorns real-world stuff into Discworld in a way that doesn't really work, but it's still funny. The only genuinely bad Discworld book (imho) is Monstrous Regiment. It just *isn't funny*.
|
|
#
¿
Nov 8, 2008 21:58
|
|