Making Money Discussion *Spoilers*

[KamexKoopa]

Welcome to the site, KamexKoopa!

Thanks I was a lurker for quite a while, reading all the discussions and whatnot, and decided to get in on it

[=Tamar]

Something I've been thinking about (based on others' ideas long ago) is the extent to which Sir Terry is using the game of Monopoly as a metaphor. In Going Postal, virtually all the pieces show up - the boot, the horse, etc - and the theme of the book is the attack by Vetinari on the monopoly that was the Grand Trunk Clacks (destroying competition, etc). Notice that the Post Office building, like so many public buildings, has a large open center with lots of small rooms around the sides. The slow moving climax with people watching from above takes place on a tiled floor with little piles of paper, and people moving the pieces of paper around - like watching the pieces and token cards on the Monopoly board. Then in MM, Moist has not one but two new big buildings, each of which has a big open space in the middle. Moist has become Banker in the game. There is even a big Spinner on the top of the mint. Vetinari is playing a game of 3-D monopoly with Ankh-Morpork, and his game includes creating opponents. Moist is being built up to be a worthy opponent. With any luck, Moist will realize that to play the larger game properly, he must be able to oversee more than one system at once, so he's being started off small with only two. He does manage once again to win in a big room with people around the edges of an open space, as the little (monopoly Scottie) moves across the space - an unexpected move, not in the standard game. The scene even involves something spinning around, though in this case it is brought in.

[raisindot]

Interesting theory, but I don't buy it at all. You said yourself that "so many public buildings have a large open center with losts of space on the side." Yes, that's standard 'old fashioned' institutional look. People in power looking down at the clerks who push paper around? Standard bureaucratic narrative conventions. And while Vetinari does play "games" with Ankh Morpork, his goal is the opposite of amassing personal wealth and power. Had he wanted to be a wealthy dictator (like past patricians) he would have simply seized power violently. Instead, he is trying to loosen control of wealth from the aristocrats and encourage the development of the middle class, which leads to a greater distribution of wealth and thus, more economic growth. The price of this development is a decrease in power, which Vetinari knows all too often by the repeated and nearly successful attempts of the old moneyed interests to remove him from power, requiring him to be saved by those who have less power (Vimes, DeWorde) than he.


Also, although Moist himself is playing the game, he is not Vetinari's opponent--he is on Vetinari's team, since his goals are the same as Vetinari's--to shake up the existing economic structure by introducing new areas. But Moist gets no personal wealth from his efforts (if he did, he wouldn't be living at the post office) and is not trying to gain wealth for himself. Indeed, his 'jobs' have presumably not made him wealthy at all (although he has achieved respect in the merchant community).

The game of Monopoly is a reflection of the standard narrative cliches surrounding capitalism and the creation of wealth--a forward moving process of buying and improving property and infrastructure, collecting outrageous rents and fees, paying (and avoiding) taxes, bankrupting the competition and a little bit of chance thrown in for good measure. The two Moist books are also reflections of these and other standard 'capitalist cliches,' but to it to a board game seems tenuous at best.

[=Tamar]

aug 17, 2012
me on terrypratchettbooks.com/forum/
the Making Money Discussion

Interesting theory, but I don't buy it at all.

What, not at all?

You said yourself that "so many public buildings have a large open center with lots of space on the side."

I said "with lots of rooms" (rooms, plural), not lots of space. The space is in the center. The small rooms are around the edges, like the properties around the edge of the Monopoly board. In the bank, they are offices. In the mint, they are the sheds of the workers.

Yes, that's standard 'old fashioned' institutional look.

If it didn't match something real at least slightly, it wouldn't work as a satirical metaphor.

And while Vetinari does play "games" with Ankh Morpork, his goal is the opposite of amassing personal wealth and power.

Vetinari already had personal wealth and power from his family. He plays many games but the particular game he is playing in GP is to end a monopoly. That's the point of the metaphor - that Gilt has been creating a monopoly and Vetinari intends to put a stop to it. Gilt's crowd of hangers-on includes several bankers, at least one of whom finds out that his bank is a
hollow mockery of a bank, but is rescued by the financiers at the end, because it would be bad for the city if too many more banks failed.

People in power looking down at the clerks who push paper around? Standard bureaucratic narrative conventions.

Looking down from above is how you get an overview, to see the working out of the plan; in context, it is not an arrogant attitude, it is a simple description of a method of observation.

Also, although Moist himself is playing the game, he is not Vetinari's opponent--he is on Vetinari's team, since his goals are the same as Vetinari's--to shake up the existing economic structure by introducing new areas. But Moist gets no personal wealth from his efforts (if he did, he wouldn't be living at the post office) and is not trying to gain wealth for himself.

It is entirely possible to work with someone and still be an opponent on a different level. Otherwise, nobody would ever disagree, break away, and start a competitive business. Moist has no choice other than to be on Vetinari's team. He has developed some pride in his success but does not get the "fizz" that he finds necessary in life from routine daily work. He needs challenges to overcome and risks to take, and he dreams of freedom.

Moist certainly wants wealth for himself; he just isn't being allowed to get it by skimming the profits, despite the hints offered in the beginning of MM about the pension fund (I believe that is Vetinari indicating that he could have the proof faked if he really wanted to bother). Moist lives at the post office as part of his job. In MM, Moist is _required_ to live at the bank. Luckily for him, it's a more comfortable situation, but even if it were a cot in the basement, he'd be required to live there.

The game of Monopoly is a reflection of the standard narrative cliches surrounding capitalism and the creation of wealth--a forward moving process of buying and improving property and infrastructure, collecting outrageous rents and fees, paying (and avoiding) taxes, bankrupting the competition and a little bit of chance thrown in for good measure. The two Moist books are also reflections of these and other standard 'capitalist cliches,' but to it to a board game seems tenuous at best.

The board game is used as a metaphor in GP; much of the imagery of the classic Monopoly game is used. Sir Terry doesn't limit himself to a single metaphor in a book, so of course there are others, but the book uses the metaphor of a game in more than one way. Vetinari says he is playing a game with someone in Uberwald and he doesn't like having it interrupted; officially the game is Thud, but it is also true that when the clacks went down and there was no post office, anything political or economic was also interrupted. Some forms of international activity used to be called "the great game."

In MM, the metaphor continues somewhat; there's still a spinner, powered by a golem, but it isn't used much. (Later there is a ladder that spins.) The Monopoly pieces appear again. The game is shifting. The book is more about becoming independent. It is more obvious when you look at the female characters. Gladys moves from being assigned to be female, to behaving female, to rejecting the subservient modes she was taught by the women at the Post Office Counters (who themselves are working at jobs not traditional for women in A-M) and Becoming Her Own Woman and Doing It For Herself. Adora continues to go off on her own and make her own decisions. The woman who belongs to the Religion club has separated from someone and has gone back to her old name. The cook's daughter is the one who actually cooks for the human beings. (In a negative form, Pucci insistently acts on her own despite the best efforts of her family to shut her up.) Male characters are also freed - in some cases, Get Out Of Jail Free - and The City itself is becoming freed from the shackles of Goldish. Moist himself finally is unburdened of several old problems at the end. (Incidentally, I wonder whether Moist ever got that chain of goldish. His new job shouldn't have interfered with that, but thematically, he should have been freed of the temptation to wear a chain.)

There is also a lesser theme of not being indispensable. Mr Bent was thought to be indispensable at first; at the end, it is clear that he has an assistant who is perfectly able to handle the daily workings of the bank. Moist can turn the post office over to Groat, and although he shakes up the bank and the mint, other people do the actual work and once he gets them organized they can keep on without him.

=Tamar

[raisindot]

Ummm, as insightful as your comments are, I'm afraid none of what you said in either message at all supports your central claim--that Pterry used the game of Monopoly as an inspiration for Going Postal and Making Money.

Without quoting (it takes up too much space), let me summarize quickly:

o Institutions with lots of smaller rooms looking down at an open space--again, this is standard narrative cliche. Look at any old Hollywood movie placed in a large bank in the 30s and 40s and you see the same thing. Nothing at all "Monopoly" about it.

o "Playing pieces": I don't know what you have as piece in England, but in the U.S. the pieces are a hat, dog, car, cannon, thimble, ship, shoe, iron, cart. I believe the English version adds a train and a man on a horse. If you think because he uses these items it has to be a direct reference think again. There are no "cars" in either book, and nearly all of these items appear regularly throughout other DW books (except a cannon and thimble). And I don't recall there being a ship or cannon or train as a plot element in either GP or MM. When Pterry wants to make references to roundworld things, he does it as a completist. If he really intended to use Monopoly as the springboard for these books he would have someone worked the imagery of every piece into the book (and I submit that you can't use both Moist to make this case; combine elements of any two books and you could moist likely make a case for any kind of influence. I bet if I looked hard enough at all the Rincewind books I could make a case that they're all based on Monty Python and The Holy Grail.

o "Spinners" Not sure what you mean here. The U.S. version uses dice. Does the English version use a spinner? In any case, the connection is tenuous at best. A game spinner is designed to produce a random result. A spinner in the mint is designed to be used as an engine. Different purposes.

o Destroying monopolies: Vetinari is not opposed to monopolies, otherwise he would have broken up the guilds long ago. What he is against are monopolies that do not represent (as he sees it) the common good. For example, he is perfectly content to let Harry King be the city's sole collector of bodily fluids (and crush the competition) because what Harry King does is good for the city and he doesn't try to bite off more power than he can chew. He would have been equally happy to let the Bank of Ankh Morpork continue to serve as the custodian for the Royal Mint if he felt that the Lavish family would lend him the capital he needed to undertake the development of the abandoned mining tunnels. He would be quite content if the Times remained AM's only newspaper (although he doesn't quash competitors) because the Times generally supports Vetinari's point of view.

In both Going Postal and Making Money, he isn't going after monopolies--he is going after corrupt and self-serving businessmen who are turning businesses that should be for the benefit of all into companies that benefit themselves. While Vetinari has no problem with people amassing wealth, he does have a problem with companies that harm the city. Notice that at the end of GP he originally suggested that the city take over the Clacks--nationalization, which is the opposite of capitalism. It was Moist who had to convince him to let the Dearhearts have another chance.

o Board games: Yes, it is true that Vetinari is quite fond of games, but so is Pterry. In fact, wasn't the first scene in The Color of Magic a dice game between the gods? And Vetinari first started playing Thud! (or an early version of it) in either The Fifth Elephant or The Truth, I believe. But the games Vetinari plays involve using pawns from his side to defeat the pawns of his enemies. His board games are not about gaining wealth or power; they're about impeding obstacles to achieving goals. His style of play reflects the strategies of wise generals who realize that the key to winning wars fought over large areas lies not in gaining land but in destroying armies. That's how the Union ultimately beat the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War. In any case, none of this has anything to do with the game of Monopoly itself.

This is not to say that it's perfectly valid for you to analyze the two books within the context of the Monopoly board game as a critical exercise; what I'm simply saying is that your central thesis--that Terry wrote GP and MM as a narrative version of the game--doesn't hold up.

[=Tamar]

Ummm, as insightful as your comments are, I'm afraid none of what you said in either message at all supports your central claim--that Pterry used the game of Monopoly as an inspiration for Going Postal and Making Money.

I didn't say that Pterry used the game of Monopoly as an inspiration, I said he used it as a metaphor.
Perhaps a clearer phrasing would be: as a source of images to turn to his own purposes. Obviously it is not the only source; Sir Terry uses many sources and writes on many levels.

Of course there are plenty of buildings that have a large central space. Not just old ones - modern office buildings and hotels often have a large central atrium. Authors need not use that central space as a feature in the story. When they do, it is fair game for interpretation. Virtually all of the playing pieces appear, albeit in a few cases in slightly adjusted form (carriage for car, and "car" was used to mean "carriage" by Shakespeare and many others). In a book in which some action is set around the large central space, the metaphor of the board-game playing board seems valid to me.

The Monopoly playing pieces have varied over time. They include:
* a car [car is an old term for a carriage. Moist rides the Mail Coach down Broadway.]
* a thimble [Moist's plan for escape includes "the thimble game"]
* a top hat [Moist's new job includes a top hat, to which he adds glitter]
* an iron [Gladys "irons" his trousers at first, but she tells him at the end that there is an iron in the locker room]
* a Scottish terrier dog [Moist sees a small scruffy dog, almost certainly Gaspode (a terrier), in an alley]
* a sack of money (1999 editions onwards) [Moist sees sacks of "gold" in the bank vault]
* an old style shoe (known as "the boot") [Mr Bent's boots are a clue, and Cosmo tries to buy Vetinari's boots]
* a horse and rider [Moist rides the golem horse]
* a battleship [Moist asks for a boat on the dollar bill, because he likes them]
* a wheelbarrow (1937b edition) [Dibbler gets a loan to buy a barrow; Moist as Banker grants the loan]
* a cannon (1937b edition)
Although there are no cannon in Ankh-Morpork, the Monopoly cannon has
a very large wheel, and there is a large treadmill wheel in the Mint.

* a train (Deluxe Edition only) [Vetinari wants to build the Undertaking, a sort of train]

The UK version of Monopoly used a spinner during WWII because of lack of materials for dice. Sir Terry would have grown up in the 1950s with the spinner version. When Mr Bent in his clown mode is pinning around with a ladder on his shoulders, the result is at least apparently random with regard to which people are caught in it.

When Pterry wants to make references to roundworld things, he does it as a completist. If he really intended to use Monopoly as the springboard for these books he would have someone worked the imagery of every piece into the book.

The imagery is pretty close to complete, I'd say. Not that I'd agree that he is a completist, because that would be boring. He had an opera house before he showed people inventing a localized live theater.

I submit that the reason Vetinari is not opposed to the guilds is that he supports opposition to the guilds as well.
He doesn't like many of them, which is one of the many reasons he supports the Watch.
Harry King's cleaning-up company is pretty much the equivalent of a privatized city-supported set of public services, and instead of having to organize it, the city (I believe) gets to collect taxes on it. I pay the municipal government for trash pickup and sewer services; the citizens of A-M pay Harry King, without the layer of government in between.

I don't think Vetinari's only motivation was a lack of capital for the Undertaking. Once Topsy Lavish died, the A-M mint would have been in the hands of the Lavishes, many of whom were living elsewhere (they traveled to come to the family meeting) and had no motivation at all to do anything for the good of the city. Part of A-M's strength has been that they make things and own things and do the lending (see the anthem), not that they hope some family in Genua will let them have some more money. Furthermore, after the revelations about the banks in GP, and the previous series of bank collapses in the backstory to GP, I doubt that Vetinari was unaware of the weakness of the banking system in general, even the ones not owned by the Lavishes. When Vetinari finds a tool, he uses it - and Moist is a sharp tool.

Notice that at the end of GP he originally suggested that the city take over the Clacks--nationalization, which is the opposite of capitalism. It was Moist who had to convince him to let the Dearhearts have another chance.

The city already was running the post office, which was a public service, after Moist provided the money, first to rebuild it and second to keep it running by making it attractive and useful. Running two competing systems would have been duplication of effort. The clacks was not invented by the city, and for the city to run both systems would have required far more organization and employees than they had money for, since the clacks needed to be totally rebuilt. Even clacksmen have to eat, and that costs money. I doubt that it took much convincing to get it turned over to the Dearhearts.

perfectly valid for you to analyze the two books within the context of the Monopoly board game as a critical exercise; what I'm simply saying is that your central thesis--that Terry wrote GP and MM as a narrative version of the game--doesn't hold up.

That wasn't my central thesis. Using the game of Monopoly as a metaphor and source of imagery is not the same as writing a novel based on, e.g., a D&D game. Other games also appear. In GP, a well-played game of Thud was used as an image for how Vetinari works (learning to understand his own weaknesses), as opposed to how Gilt worked (using it to learn his opponent's weaknesses, while ignoring his own). Monopoly just happened to be a natural for a source of useful imagery.

[raisindot]

I didn't say that Pterry used the game of Monopoly as an inspiration, I said he used it as a metaphor.
Perhaps a clearer phrasing would be: as a source of images to turn to his own purposes. Obviously it is not the only source; Sir Terry uses many sources and writes on many levels.

I will still submit that your attempt to link Monopoly imagery to Pterry's metaphorical intent in these books is bogus. I will focus on refuting your imagery suggestions.

The Monopoly playing pieces have varied over time. They include:
* a car [car is an old term for a carriage. Moist rides the Mail Coach down Broadway.] S[b]orry, doesn't work. A car is a motorized vehicle. A carriage is a horse drawn entity. [/b]
* a thimble [Moist's plan for escape includes "the thimble game"]. It's a stretch, but I'll give it to you.
* a top hat [Moist's new job includes a top hat, to which he adds glitter]. He had this hat in Going Postal. As I said before, the more books you add to the pot, the more likely you are to find support for a theory. He does not get a new hat in MM; he uses the same one. You'd have a better argument using Mr. Bent, but most of the rich people in AM have top hats so this isn't unusual.
* an iron [Gladys "irons" his trousers at first, but she tells him at the end that there is an iron in the locker room]. A stretch, but I'll give it to you.
* a Scottish terrier dog [Moist sees a small scruffy dog, almost certainly Gaspode (a terrier), in an alley]. You have no proof that this is Gaspode at all. And plenty of other DW books have dogs in them. And Gaspode is not a terrier; he is a mutt of many breeds. The only true terrier in the DW books was Wuffles, Lord Vetinari's dog, who died long before GP. If you wanted to make it more general and talk about Dogs, well, Mr. Fusspot fits the bill, but, as said, it isn't unusual at all for Pterry to use dogs in AM.
* a sack of money (1999 editions onwards) [Moist sees sacks of "gold" in the bank vault]. It's a bank, for goodness sake. Where is the money going to be--lying around by itself? The "bags of money" is a standard banking cliche. And it's one line. If there were more explicit references to Moist's new paper dollars being carried around in sacks you might have a case, but this didn't happen--the dollars were in boxes and chests at the end.
* an old style shoe (known as "the boot") [Mr Bent's boots are a clue, and Cosmo tries to buy Vetinari's boots]. Oh come on; nearly every DW books mentions shoes or boots at least once. Vimes' and Granny's boots are integral parts of their characters.
* a horse and rider [Moist rides the golem horse]. Nearly all DW books have horses and riders; it's the primary means of transport other than coaches. Moist himself is a veteran horse rider, as he proved in GP.
* a battleship [Moist asks for a boat on the dollar bill, because he likes them]. [b]If it's not a battleship, it doesn't count. Pterry is very exact in his metaphors.
* a wheelbarrow (1937b edition) [Dibbler gets a loan to buy a barrow; Moist as Banker grants the loan]. I think Pterry's purpose was to create Dibbler as the world's first "barrow boy," rather than to have an explicit Monopoly reference.
* a cannon (1937b edition). Although there are no cannon in Ankh-Morpork, the Monopoly cannon has
a very large wheel, and there is a large treadmill wheel in the Mint. Oh, come on, completely bogus. A cannon is a cannon. Lots of things have big wheels but aren't cannons. And there's a huge difference between a wheel used to move an object from one place to another to shoot something and one used as a means of power.

Sorry, but the metaphor idea just doesn't hold up. Indeed, you could make a much more impressive argument that the Watch books are based on Monopoly. Let's look.

* a car. The carriage powered by broomsticks in Thud is a much more like a car than any in GP or MM.
* a thimble [Moist's plan for escape includes "the thimble game"]. Many of the watch books have 'real' seamstresses, and I thought that maybe one of the Dolly Sisters had a lethal thimble, but I'm not sure.
* a top hat. Once Vimes becomes Duke, he is forced to wear an aristocratic hat. Otherwise, he wears a helmet.
* an iron [Gladys "irons" his trousers at first, but she tells him at the end that there is an iron in the locker room]. Ummm, there's got to be one somewhere...ogh yeah, Detritus 'irons' his armor by banging it with his hands.
* a Scottish terrier dog. Wuffles, Vetinari's terrier is an important character in The Truth. And Vimes himself is often referred to as "Vetinari's terrier."
* a sack of money. Nobby is always cleaning out the petty cash. Vimes has inherited many sacks of money as Sybil's husband. In the Truth, Pin and Tulip and paid with a sack of gems.
* an old style shoe. Vimes is obsessed with having the right kind of boots, refusing to wear high quality boots because they don't give him the feel of the streets.
* a horse and rider. Vimes rode a camel through the latter half of Jingo.
* a battleship. Vimes pursued 71-Hour Ali's boat, which was technically rigged to be a battleship. The Watch has a patrol ship, which is constantly sinking. Leonard of Quirm's submarine can easily serve as a weapon of war.
* a wheelbarrow. Harry King's workers keep the newsprint in barrows of some kind in The Truth. The dwarves use wheelbarrows to get rid of the mud they are digging out from under AM in Thud.
* a cannon. The gonne is the closest thing AM has had to a cannon-like weapon, although the flares used by the Clacks Tower people in TFE are similar gunpowder based ammunition.
* A train. The dwarven tunnels in Thud uses train-like devices to transport people around. This is not mentioned specifically in MM.
* Playing games: Vimes is essentially Vetinari's pawn much of the time, and Vetinari uses him to shake up the power structure (i.e., monopolies) of AM. At the same time, Vimes is really the true Monopoly player, since he steadily amasses power and wealth through the books by buying into the existing power structure (marrying Sybil; helping Vetinari fend off attempts to remove him).

So you see? Look deep enough and you can extend this analogy to cover any DW book. I could probably do the same thing with the Witches books if I tried hard enough.

[=Tamar]

I didn't say that Pterry used the game of Monopoly as an inspiration, I said he used it as a metaphor.

I will still submit that your attempt to link Monopoly imagery to Pterry's metaphorical intent in these books is bogus.

A difference of opinion, and now you've changed your stance. Since this is merely a casual fan discussion,
with no real-world significance, have fun. I will respond.

I will focus on refuting your imagery suggestions.

* a car [car is an old term for a carriage. Moist rides the Mail Coach down Broadway.]

Sorry, doesn't work. A car is a motorized vehicle. A carriage is a horse drawn entity.

Does work. A car is a known and attested term for a horse-drawn vehicle, especially in a culture
which does not have motorized vehicles. See Shakespeare-online dot com, Sonnet 7.

* a top hat [Moist's new job includes a top hat, to which he adds glitter].

He had this hat in Going Postal.

Nope. Moist's job-related hat in GP was a peaked postman's cap with wings.
He got his job-related hat in MM from Mr. Bent, page 107 UK hardcover:
<<
Bent added: 'Your hat, sir.'
'What hat?'
'For the Master of the Royal Mint.' Bent held it up.
It was a black silk hat.
[...]
A black top hat. No style. No style at all.
>>

* a Scottish terrier dog [Moist sees a small scruffy dog, almost certainly Gaspode (a terrier), in an alley].

You have no proof that this is Gaspode at all. [snip] And Gaspode is not a terrier;
he is a mutt of many breeds. The only true terrier in the DW books was Wuffles

Any scruffy dog accompanying a man in an alley, in a Discworld book, when not otherwise described, can be assumed to be Gaspode. In The Truth, Gaspode was terrified that he would be mistaken for Wuffles, so frightened that he had himself shaved and dyed pink. Therefore, Gaspode looks like Wuffles, therefore Gaspode looks like a terrier. That is all that is required for him to resemble the Monopoly piece.

* a sack of money (1999 editions onwards) [Moist sees sacks of "gold" in the bank vault].

It's a bank, for goodness sake. Where is the money going to be--lying around by itself?
The "bags of money" is a standard banking cliche. And it's one line.

Page 38, UK hardcover: 'The metal, in open bags and boxes, gleamed dully in the torchlight.'
The gold in the vault was in open sacks, and Moist never got inside to lift a piece and feel the weight.
Auditors in the past had also apparently just looked inside and never weighed a piece, let alone tested it.
The fact that there was fake gold in the vault indicates that it was a deliberate fraud,
not just missing but fraudulently replaced, and that was a plot element.
The sacks were open so that auditors could see coins visible as well as ingots in the boxes.

* an old style shoe (known as "the boot") [Mr Bent's boots are a clue, and Cosmo tries to buy Vetinari's boots].

Oh come on; nearly every DW books mentions shoes or boots at least once.
Vimes' and Granny's boots are integral parts of their characters.

Both Mr Bent's and Vetinari's boots are plot elements, not mere character notes.

* a horse and rider [Moist rides the golem horse].

Nearly all DW books have horses and riders

The golem horses are introduced in MM. The Monopoly horse and rider is positioned on its hind legs;
the golem horse that Moist rides rears as he talks to Sacharissa, not once but twice.

* a battleship [Moist asks for a boat on the dollar bill, because he likes them].

[b]If it's not a battleship, it doesn't count. Pterry is very exact in his metaphors.

Who is to say what the boat on the dollar bill looked like? A Discworld battleship could be anything from a trireme
to a square-rigger, with an outside chance of an Omnian steamboat.

* a wheelbarrow (1937b edition) [Dibbler gets a loan to buy a barrow; Moist as Banker grants the loan].

I think Pterry's purpose was to create Dibbler as the world's first "barrow boy," rather
than to have an explicit Monopoly reference.

A barrow is a barrow.

* a cannon (1937b edition). Although there are no cannon in Ankh-Morpork, the Monopoly cannon has
a very large wheel, and there is a large treadmill wheel in the Mint.

Oh, come on, completely bogus. A cannon is a cannon. Lots of things have big wheels but aren't cannons.

Just giving you one... and if I were using multiple books instead of sticking firmly to one book, I could have used the
Barking Dog from Interesting Times, or the Gonne, or even the small pocket crossbow that has been outlawed by Vetinari.

Indeed, you could make a much more impressive argument that
the Watch books are based on Monopoly. Let's look.

* a top hat. Once Vimes becomes Duke, he is forced to wear an aristocratic hat. Otherwise, he wears a helmet.

Nope. Vimes's Duke hats have feathers in them.

* a horse and rider. Vimes rode a camel through the latter half of Jingo.

A camel isn't a horse. Besides, you missed a better one. Vimes very reluctantly rides a horse for a short time in Snuff.

* A train.

The dwarven tunnels in Thud uses train-like devices to transport people around. This is not mentioned specifically in MM.

But it is implied any time the Undertaking is mentioned.

I could probably do the same thing with the Witches books if I tried hard enough.

Go on, you know you want to.

[cabbagehead]

I recently found out about a Roundworld version of the Glooper. It was the MONIAC:

The MONIAC was approximately 2 m high, 1.2 m wide and almost 1 m deep, and consisted of a series of transparent plastic tanks and pipes which were fastened to a wooden board. Each tank represented some aspect of the UK national economy and the flow of money around the economy was illustrated by coloured water. At the top of the board was a large tank called the treasury. Water (representing money) flowed from the treasury to other tanks representing the various ways in which a country could spend its money. For example, there were tanks for health and education. To increase spending on health care a tap could be opened to drain water from the treasury to the tank which represented health spending. Water then ran further down the model to other tanks, representing other interactions in the economy. Water could be pumped back to the treasury from some of the tanks to represent taxation. Changes in tax rates were modeled by increasing or decreasing pumping speeds.

etc

Looks like a wikipedia editor was aware of the connection:

The Terry Pratchett novel Making Money contains a similar device as a major plot point. However, this device can not only be used to simulate the economy but can magically affect it.

[raisindot]

Did anyone see the new Denzel Washington movie, "Flight?"

I may be in the minority in thinking that this was a great concept that got ruined in a trashily written and directed production, saved only by Washington's to be as bad as the material he was working with.

Anyone, without giving away spoilers, there is one scene in the movie--really the climax near the end--that totally reminds me of the near-end climax of Making Money. Maybe it's a common narrative convention, but the setting, the way the scene was written, and how it resolved couldn't keep me from thinking about it. If you'd read and seen both, you probably know what I'm referring to. It was much better in the book.