The Ferengi Aren’t Capitalists

I thought I'd have a little fun with this one. 

I'm not a huge Trekkie, but I absolutely loved the show Deep Space 9. I watched it from when it first aired in 1993 right up to the series finale in 1999. I was only eleven years old when I started watching it, so it was a "formative years" series for me. I recently watched the entire series through on Netflix. It's seven seasons, 23+ episodes a season, with each episode having about 45-50 minutes of content, so it took a long time. Basically, it was my evening pass time for December 2020 through February of this year. 

I enjoyed it so much I could forgive the garbage science. Like faster than light travel with warp drives. No big deal, how else do you get to distant star systems? How else would we actually meet all those charming alien species? There is also some nonsensical biology. As in, how would species from different planets, who presumably came through a completely separate evolutionary line, be able to interbreed with others? Like, is there some panspermia implied here, spanning the entire galaxy? An episode of TNG shows the main characters reverting to earlier stages in their evolution; it kind of rules out a recent panspermia by a common ancestor. Yet, there are many half-human characters that are half Vulcan or half Betazoid.  Deep Space 9's major antagonist Gul Dukat sires at least two half-Bajoran children. That's fine, we want to see alien species interacting, falling in love, having families, etc. So maybe this is all forgivable for the sake of good story-telling. 

What's less forgivable is the garbage social commentary. If there's a compelling reason for busting the laws of physics and biology, it's so we can get realistic characters and societies interacting across interstellar distances. So they should at least strive for good social science. 

Ferengi society is on full display throughout the series. I think it is supposed to be some kind of critique of capitalism, but if so it's a poor one. I can't tell if the Ferengi parts were written by someone who is a critic of capitalism or by a fan of capitalism who is making fun of a less refined critic's naïve view of it. (I had the same reaction when I read this New Yorker piece making fun of libertarians...or maybe it's really lampooning their (our) over-the-top critics, I can't tell.) 

People mean different things by the word "capitalist", but it generally means something like "free markets." It's clear that is not what the Ferengi have. They have strict laws regulating commerce. For one thing, women are not allowed to work. In fact, they are confined to the home and forbidden from wearing clothes. (Isn't there a garment industry on Ferenginar? A special interest who would lobby for repeal of this particular law? Geez, this is even a bad critique of crony capitalism! There is apparently no regulatory capture on Ferenginar?)  Denying your economy the services of half its inhabitants is not free-market capitalism, it's some kind of ultra-"traditional" repressive police state. 

Quark's wait staff for his bar are all apparently tied to their jobs. They are poorly paid, and there is some kind of barrier to them seeking employment elsewhere. (Some kind of occupational licensure maybe? Something that constrains them to being waiters?) The formation of labor unions is explicitly outlawed by the Ferengi government. That's perhaps consistent with a "crony capitalist" society where the business interests have captured the apparatus of state power, but it is emphatically not laissez-faire capitalism. When Quark's wait staff organize a union (at the suggestion of Miles O'Brien and under the leadership of Quark's courageous brother Rom), he gets a visit from liquidator Brunt. Brunt shuts down his restaurant under the authority of the Ferengi government, and any Ferengi who patronize him are similarly excommunicated. 

The Grand Negus is plainly some kind of monarch. There is no "free market" analog of his position in society. When Quark goes to see him on Ferenginar, he is constantly paying various bribes just to make his way to his office. Late in the series, the Grand Negus institutes a large number of "reforms" that horrify Quark, like a welfare state and taxes to pay for it. Quark's reaction suggests that these things didn't exist prior, that they were beyond the pale for a good Ferengi business man like himself. So there's no social safety net, but there is otherwise a lot of influence peddling and the direct hand of government in economic policy. 

In one episode, Captain Sisko tasks Chief O'Brien with getting a hard-to-come-by piece of equipment to repair the Defiant (the Federation's powerful little battleship). O'Brien insists that it will take weeks to acquire one, but Sisko tells him he has just three days. Rom's son Nog is at this point in Starfleet and is O'Brien's assistant. Nog makes a series of trades and barters to eventually acquire the needed part on schedule, saving the day for Chief O'Brien. The bureaucratic command-and-control economy of Starfleet is apparently afflicted with shortages, as are any economic systems that allocate scarce resources by something other than prices. What's interesting is that Nog is doing a series of barters rather than pulling out a wad of gold pressed latinum to purchase the piece outright on the open market. Or perhaps he might have bribed the right officials to jump up the queue. I don't really get why we're supposed to think Ferengi are so adept at barter. Are large parts of the Ferengi economy outside of the money economy? That would seem odd, given their obsession with latinum. Maybe black-market dealings present a lot of opportunities for barter? Or their centuries of commerce with species who have non-money economies? You could tell an interesting story here, I'm sure. But long chains of goods-for-goods barter don't describe a capitalist economy. Usually exchange would be done by one party paying the other with money rather than exchanging goods for other goods.  

Quark and his brother Rom are often depicted as being adept hackers and lock picks. Quark gets in trouble for hacking into DS9's com system to transmit advertisements for his bar to the station's inhabitants. In another episode, Quark, Sisko, and a female Vorta (the first one we meet in any Star Trek series) are being held captive. The Vorta is wearing a collar that, as far as Sisko and Quark know, is inhibiting her psionic abilities. Quark manages to pick the lock and release her. Furthermore, he has the technical aptitude to realize that the collar didn't actually have an internal mechanism for doing anything else. (So the psionic powers and the collar suppressing them were all a ruse.) Quark's technical skills are impressive, but he comes off as having the skillset of a thief, which is not the same skillest one would expect from a capitalist merchant. Put this together with Nog's aptitude at barter, and you get the impression of a species that is materialistic and acquisitive to the point of self-caricature. But it's not really a picture of free-market capitalism, which would have some system for establishing property rights and deterring theft and misuse of property.

It's not entirely clear what rights a Ferengi has to redress when he feels cheated by another. Rule of Acquisition number 17 states "A contract is a contract is a contract...but only between Ferengi." Sounds clear enough, but what if the parties disagree about whether the contract has been fulfilled? Capitalism requires some mechanism for dispute resolution in these cases. In one episode, Quark receives a diagnosis for a fatal disease that he later realizes was mistaken. He's happy that he'll get the opportunity to sue the doctor for malpractice. So clearly there are courts. There is a mechanism for being made whole when another Ferengi's services aren't adequately delivered. On other occasions, you get the impression that they take a strong "buyer beware" stance. Quark is horrified, for example, when the Grand Negus (having been brainwashed by the wormhole aliens) rewrites the first rule of acquisition to say "If the customer wants their money back, give it to them." This is basically the approach of Walmart and Amazon, to name two capitalist institutions in the real world. It buys back the goodwill of a customer who feels unsatisfied (not necessarily even cheated!). So why should Quark be so mortified? His reaction suggests it's contrary to Ferengi custom, but returns should be a common practice in a successful merchant society. Capitalism has no inherent tendency toward a caveat emptor or caveat vendator as the default rule. Profitable companies should be voluntarily (as in, without redress to a court) returning money to unsatisfied customers, assuming they want repeat customers. A good capitalist would be maximizing total future profits, not simply trying to maximize the profit from any particular sale or customer.

Here is a much better post on this point that preempts this one by many years. The author remembers more Ferengi examples from TNG than I do. An excerpt:

A Ferengi state military may or may not exist, although we can be sure that the Nagus must control some, perhaps much, of the Alliance's military force. It is difficult to say whether the daimons are government employees or private actors, or both. Education does not exist. Health care and social services are also nonexistent.

As far as we can tell, so is industry and innovation. "Investment opportunities" as mentioned are limited to crazy ponzi schemes and quasi-legal brokings of things not made by the broker.

Another thing: the monetary system of the Ferengi Alliance appears designed to impede the efficient extension of credit.

Given all this, it is impossible to say that the Ferengi system is remotely capitalist, or remotely free market. It appears nearly feudal. At best, it is like a caricature of China, but even the nominally communist government has a far greater adherence to actual capitalist principles than the corrupt, influence-ridden, purely parasitic Ferengi Alliance regime...

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This is not directly related to the Ferengi, except as a point of contrast. On another episode, Sisko's son Jake lectures Nog that the "enlightened" Federation gave up their money economy a long time ago. Which makes me wonder...how does Sisko acquire the land for his house on Bajor? Is it "gifted" to him by the Bajoran government? Which possibly means expropriated by a private land-holder. Or is it gifted by a Bajoran land-owner who is pleased to supply it for the Emissary? Does Sisko in fact have a non-Federation income stream that he can use to make purchases?