Which is not to say that it is perfect or superior to Earth and the larger Federation’s comparatively egalitarian post-scarcity economy, or even particularly ethical.
However, from what we’re shown, the Ferengi political structure (which is clearly part and parcel with it’s commercial structure) does not, with the one HUGE exception of it’s treatment of women, make use of divisive social issues to distract its work force from the disadvantages of capitalism. Unlike contemporary Western capitalism, everyone on Ferenginar from the wealthiest to the poorest appears to operate from the same transparent, if morally bankrupt, ruleset, and the powerful, importantly, don’t pretend otherwise.
This is a dark but kind of brilliant aspect of the rules of acquisition - All members of society, including laborers, are taught from birth to operate from a position of mutual distrust and can operate comfortably with full knowledge that the person on the other side of the table will disregard all other concerns in order to take complete financial advantage of them, and they will do the same. This bypasses a lot of steps that would otherwise be required in terms of building trust or engaging in any kind of sales or negotiation, although there is likely a lot more onus on each individual to do the calculus on any given business transaction internally to ensure that all of their vulnerabilities are accounted for. The phrase ‘trust me’ must be a complete joke in all contexts.
Furthermore, because greed is not just a social value but a desirable and marketable job skill, the playing field, which is horrific from the perspective of most 24th century humans, may actually be more level than even modern capitalism. There’s evidence to suggest that if even the poorest worker can successfully skim profits without leaving immediate evidence behind, this is almost blameless. Quark knows that Rom shaves the latinum, for example.
This is not a complete theory and I’m sure there are plenty of counterexamples, but mostly I just wanted to gripe that shit is so tough irl right now that even working as a Ferengi waiter seems like a dream by comparison.
“Ferengi talk about Wall Street as if it were holy ground.”
—Kathryn JanewayI seem to recall a producer, maybe the Great Bird himself, saying that Ferenginar was created to show the ridiculous logical conclusion of the US obsession with capitalism and accumulating wealth.
Oh definitely. I think everyone writing Ferengi episodes had this in mind.
But at some point in DS9’s run, I think someone (probably Ira) realized that the worship of the “free market” was becoming even worse than the fictional and cartoonish economics that they invented for the sole purpose of making fun of capitalism, to the point that they somehow got away with giving Quark, of all characters, the moral high ground when criticizing human history.
True. Little did we know how crazy it could really get. :D
…to the point that they somehow got away with giving Quark, of all characters, the moral high ground when criticizing human history.
Honestly, your “the most stable and ethical expression of capitalism” thesis has made me realize just how right Quark was. With humanity, the wealth gained through unchecked capitalism inevitably gets parleyed into political power that destroys the free market that enabled it in the first place. For Ferengi society to be stable, that dictatorial tendency would have to be absent, which means they really are better.
@CaptObvious @commander_la_freak
Yes, TNG started before the breakup of the USSR, so criticism of capitalism was a pretty radical thing to put in primetime in America in the late cold war. The Ferengi were explicitly analogized with “Yankee traders” to make it clear that they were basically “Evil Space America” as a twisted mirror alternative to the Federation’s “Good Space America” with only the nice parts.
Again IIRC, that was part of why Roddenberry kept it off the Big 3 networks. After having too many TOS stories gutted by NBC executives in the 60s, he wanted to TNG to reflect hisvision of the future.
I agree. But there were a few moments where the Ferengi were shown not to behave consistently with the principles they espoused.
They shouldn’t have had any problem with (Edit: Rom) forming a union, for instance. After all, what’s wrong with a little collusion and price-fixing between the sellers of labor?
I guess some hypocrisy is to be expected in any society.
b/c the system doesn’t work if labor can’t be exploited. The rich & powerful may collude. The proles may not. I love Rom’s story/character arc.
I think you’re on to something. Contemporary society claims to adhere to a higher moral compass, but then trashes it if a profit can be made. The Ferengi Alliance makes no such claim, so everyone is getting stabbed in the front - so to speak.
Imagine how difficult it would be to hire a ferengi lawyer to sue your ferengi accountant. shudders
Although this would be a densely layered and hilariously pedantic scenario, I kind of doubt that Ferenginar has lawyers, as such.
Obviously someone must arbitrate disputes but I wonder if it wouldn’t just be like;
Plantif: I want to file suit against my accountant!
Counsel: Alright - My consulting fee is 70 slips a minute.
Plantif: Fine - My accountant embezzled from me!
Counsel: And you just let him? There’s no case here. By the way, I charge by the hour; that’ll be 2 bars 2 strips. Next client!
I would imagine that they do. Ferenginar still has rules and things that you must abide by even when gaining a profit, or else they would have no need of the commerce authority to act as a regulatory body in the first place.
An embezzlement case might involve you paying your counsel more if they can recover a portion of your money through the legal system, winding their way through regulations, or having their own tricks to get it back.
Lawyers are also good for more than suits. A Ferengi business might have one on hand for dealing with all of those complicated laws, so they can focus their lobes on the business itself, instead of being mired in paperwork.
This analysis brings to mind the Liaden of Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Korval ™ books.
Liaden society has a profession called quendra that are a mix of accountants, lawyers and commercial adjudicators. It’s also a society based on ‘balance’ counting-coup where everyone, all their lives, is keeping score in everyone else. Even Ferengi might be horrified.
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You make a good point. Although it’s not an economic system I’d like to be a part of, at least everyone knows what the rules are, and people expect to be taken advantage of by everyone else.
I mean let’s be clear for most of Ferengi history women were not allowed to own property of any kind - including clothing and some of their business endeavors include poaching endangered animals and literally being slave traders. I mean - I don’t think there’s any indication that Ferengi society was anything more than hyper-capitalist dystopia as a juxtaposition of the Federation socialist utopia. That Rom and Quark are goofy and lovable I think speaks more to how bad every other Ferengi is operating outside of a Federation station.
From the Federation’s perspective the Ferengi are harmless and in this way they may be ethical enough to not warrant confrontation, but at the same time - the Federation does seem to stop them when they’re doing something like slave trading so I think we can imagine that for some people in the sphere of Ferengi influence they’re not so ethical.
On this note, part of me wonders if some of the Ferengi encountered by the Federation early on weren’t already outlaws looking to make profit outside the constraints of Ferengi ethics, such as they are.
This is a question worth asking. As others have pointed out there sort of seems to be clear that the rules are the rules and business rules trump all other rules. The Rules of Acquisition tend to be the Ferengi Alliance’s highest law. It’s both a religious law and a practical one and I think therein is where the problem lies. You can’t make profit outside of the constrains of normal ethics because whatever makes profit is what is ethical to do.
This is why so many contradictory Rules exist in this system. War is good for business and peace is good for business, and neither of these are statements on what is “bad” for business. There’s nothing here that says not to do anything and I think in this way Ferengi ethics largely comes down to there’s no precept that says I shouldn’t do this and I was able to exchange doing it for profit so ultimately it serves a higher purpose.
And since it seems like there is a fair amount of legalize extortion that happens in Ferengi while it might be technically illegal to do slavery, it might be more profitable to do it and therefore on the whole you can come out with an ethical conclusion that is “good” especially if you’re some mid-level Ferengi in charge of making sure that slavery doesn’t happen and you’re able to take a little bit of a kickback.
De facto slavery exists for women in Ferengi society, but the fact that no other apparent slave caste exists along with how quickly Ferenginar’s patriarchy was restructured, if not quite dismantled, I think one possible barrier to an effective slave industry (certainly chattel slavery) is that there would be no concept of a person or group of people who should not be trying to earn profit, and the power structures that exist would not punish an enslaved person who was able to skim profits from any labor or administrative work they performed, nor would it necessarily reinforce their status as a slave if they were able to buy themselves out of their position.
I think Ferengi probably thinks that a person or business can own another person, but I don’t think they can conceive of a person who can’t/ or shouldn’t own anything. This is like how it’s not illegal to attempt to escape prison in some countries - There’s a recognition of the desire to be free.
Now, that’s all a huge problem when Ferengi develop interstellar travel and encounter full-blown slavers like the Orion Syndicate and other criminal elements, because 1) they’ll not only participate in the slave trade for all the reasons you said, but they’ll be really good at it, and 2) they won’t fully understand the power structures beyond wealth which makes enslavement so egregious.
I wonder: Quark’s weapon trading may not have bothered his conscience because of him adopting human ethics, as he feared, but because he was parsing his own ethics with a fuller understanding of the implications of what he was participating in as he was learning more about alien cultures.
And even it’s nakedly racist (“A contract, is a contract, is a contract-- but only between Ferengi”) and misogynistic (“Females and finances don’t mix.”)
What does that say about capitalism?
