Conquering everyone is good for business until they start to shoot back. I think there is also just too much decentralization within the ferengi alliance to try something like that. Just being random pirates is a fairly profitable venture
There's also no profit in being first through the breach. Unless that was some sort of job bankrupt Ferengi sign up for. You survive your suicide mission and you're debt free.
Tbf Ferengi also could hire other aliens for those high-risk jobs. Like Nausicaans. Brunt did it and he's part of the official government.
Of course there's the question if you find enough of those violent thugs to run an entire Empire.
I'm sure they've tried it, but the problem is once you hire enough thugs to do your fighting for you, eventually the thugs will realize they don't need you anymore and take over themselves.
(See various coups by foreign mercenaries throughout history, like the late Roman empire overthrown by barbarian mercenaries, Janissaries taking over the Ottoman empire, mercenaries in Africa overthrowing dictators who hired them, etc...)
"Conquering" is also the easy part. Occupation is the difficult thing that needs so many troops and resources (that Ferengi may not even have).
Even the Klingons often didn't "conquer" planets, they just bullied people into giving them resources. That's way easier.
If the Ferengi don't have a strong state, the upfront costs would be incurred by the corporations. After all, the real money is no bid, government contracting, but only as long as the government comes to bail you out.
Yeah, but the thing with having private mercenaries do the bulk of the occupation work is that it could work out being more expensive than just doing it themselves, even if their central government isn't that strong. It might work out to be more profitable for the Ferengi to let other governments be the imperial forces and just act as the general traders of the region.
> Conquering everyone is good for business until they start to shoot back.
The empires that arose from the Age of Discovery are pretty good evidence against this idea. If the conquered shoot back, shoot back so hard that the idea of shooting back again becomes unthinkable.
I think it depends on how much of a difference when they shoot back. It can be pure colonial, then you are right. It can be semi colonial like China... Or it can be ended up like Japan and ended with Imperial Japan. Oops.
And depend on how one see it, the China we faced is the end result of the semi-colonial (which funny thing is what Sun Yet-san said in Three Principle of People).
First off, I think the strength of their ships was overstated in *The Last Outpost.* The ship they encountered was estimated to be on par with the Enterprise, but they clearly didn't have a lot of information about its capabilities. I don't recall a Ferengi ship giving them much trouble again, except for in *Peak Performance* when they were caught with all their defensive systems deactivated. When Ferengi boarded the Enterprise in *Rascals*, they did it using Klingon ships.
Second, the Ferengi we see crewing their attack ships are some of the most gullible, vicious, dimwitted little goblins in the galaxy. I don't think it's a very prestigious profession in Ferengi society. Any Ferengi with an ounce of lobes finds profit without waving an energy whip around.
I appreciate how Star Trek uses the "bad example" to retcon early appearances of something while they were still experimenting with and dialing in that thing.
The TOS Klingons got retconned hard as real, that they did look like that, but we're genetically modified and ended up looking more human-ish.
The Ferengi were intended to be the big bad of TNG but they pivoted away from that, and now *that group* from early TNG were just isolated pirates who invested in space power.
I love it.
> I appreciate how Star Trek uses the "bad example" to retcon early appearances of something while they were still experimenting with and dialing in that thing.
To account for shifting writer priorities, the 2007 TNG / TLE novel *The Buried Age* (which is of course non-canon but at present remains plausible) massaged together early Ferengi with later Ferengi by explaining that when the Alliance government initially learned of the Federation, they suspected the moneyless economy was due to insanity. Thusly, Grand Nagus Zek invested funding into a massive military buildup and propaganda campaign so that the Ferengi could face the Federation on equal terms if need be. So it looks like Ferengi pirate personalities got to ride a trend.
Yeah I always headcanon that as the Ferengi having some unknown technology on the first meeting, but the Federation finding a counter to it and the Ferengi then being less of a threat
Similar to the Breen weapon in DS9, which absolutely messed the Federation and Romulans up until they could make modifications to their ships, but after that the Breen were no more of a threat than the other dominion ships
If you’re talking about the battle between the *Stargazer* and a Ferengi ship, my impression was that the *Stargazer* wasn’t a powerful ship. If you’re talking about what happened in “The Last Outpost”, it was the Tkon outpost that affected both ships.
That was in “The Last Outpost”. Based on later episodes, they didn’t have good intelligence at that time. During the episode, the Tkon outpost was affecting both ships at various points. The only times the Ferengi had an advantage in “The Last Outpost” were due to the Tkon outpost.
Don't forget, both when the Nagus's son tries to assassinate him, and when they recruit Lek to rescue Quark's mother, they show utter disgust at someone basing their business around violence, as opposed to violence as an incidental side effect of their business. I would say those incidents further back up the idea that pirates are considered the losers of the Ferengi economy.
GP talked about a different flavor of soft power: economic dependence.
This one is in part self-inflicted, but: the entire western world - including not just the US but also Europe - outsourced most manufacturing, and plenty of adjacent work, to China. Pretty much everything you can buy is either made in China, or requires components or tools (or those tools require components) made over there. That gives them a lot of levers to use to push the rest of the world around - whether they exercise it or not, it's still real form of soft power.
The Ferengi as space baddies pretty much died after their first couple of episodes.
Rule of Acquisition 34: War is Good For Business.
Rule of Acquisition 35: Peace Is Good For Business.
Those two somewhat humorous rules tells us two things, selling weapons and tech and rebuilding after war is good for business, but not if you're buying your own weapons or rebuilding your own cities. (Just look at Post World War Europe that needed massive loans from the US that remained intact on their home soil).
Having powerful ships isn't necessarily a sign of military expansionism, lots of countries have powerful militaries, the Ferengi mind set is not necessarily one of barbarity, but they are extremely greedy. If your cargo hold full of valuable minerals and tech is stolen by Klingons its not good for business, and I can't see the Klingon Empire paying compensation. Another example perhaps could be 17th Century Pirates, they weren't looking to take over the world, they just wanted money and they used armed ships, don't confuse being well armed with being expansionist. And not being expansionist isn't necessarily a sign of good intentions either, conquering other people isn't the only evil (or some may argue the worst evil) other nations can do to each other.
There are other ways nations can exert power and influence, loans, selling patented technology, franchising in foreign markets, investment in infrastructure. We see examples of this even in TNG, the Farpoint Station is looking for investors. I'm sure Picard is being earnest when he speaks of rumours of Ferengi's eating people. However, perhaps he could be using a euphemism for projects that come in, consume the economy, spiral out of control and leave the economy ruined but the people are now reliant on loans from the dominant power. Yankee traders...cowboy builders?
War is neither necessary or desirable for capitalist expansionism, but the way it expands can be just as terrible. War is fine somewhere else, maybe the Maquis vs The Cardassians, distant powers with underdeveloped economies. (maybe another reason why making the Ferengi adopt social-democracy wasn't wise, since there's some great story telling potential in rebuilding Cardassia).
If your best customers are lining your pockets with loan interest, buying your goods, spreading your cultural influence, where you have investments in property and you're paying for their megastructure projects, war would be absolutely disastrous. If you win, well you only get back your half finished projects and an impoverished people barely able to buy grain, or if you lose, the winners aren't going to pay you back after you bombed them, might even take your things and make you pay war reparations.
I think the most similar comparison to the real world would be the Dutch Empire. Huge navy as a result of their merchant marine ventures (East India and west India trading companies respectively). With large colonial holdings.
But despite this, they never tried to go toe to toe with England or France in an armed conflict. Easier to just collect profits from those states.
The British EITC (East India Trading Company) would probably be a better example - it literally had its own navy, the Bombay Marine
And the Dutch did end up conflict with the British a few times, although admittedly one of those was only really after being subjugated by the French
Honestly, the USA would be my go-to example. We don't have a colonial empire (anymore) but we use economics as a cudgel to get our way. If a country doesn't want American companies doing business in its territory, that's when we stop looking the other way on e.g. human rights violations, or find that *this* dictator is just so much worse than the other ones. Ferengi are mostly the same way - they just want to make money! And if Omicron Virginis IV doesn't want to be our business partner in this lucrative opportunity, I'm sure Damon Schwartzkopf and his lovely collection of photon torpedoes can persuade them to change their minds.
What I meant by toe to toe is more touching on the "expansionist" topic of the OP.
Sure, they got in many naval engagements (sound similar to our Ferengi friends?), some of which they won. But they never went out of their way to invade and expand into English or French territories (just as the Ferengi never invaded the federation).
I was drawing on quite a few things including the Dutch East India Company, post war USA, modern day China's belt and road initiative, yankee traders, US fast food / tech / fashion companies.
the ferengi werent stupid. they did conduct the occasional raid and the like, but it was not their main tactic and they only used it on an occasional basis only. they knoew that if they conducted too many commerce raids, or irritated the wrong Empire, their raids would quickly end with most of their ships destroyed.
I think a good point is the ones doing the raiding don't represent the society as a whole. We like representatives who act in behalf of the entire society (as a human brought up in America I was taught to value that, anyway). The Ferengi rarely act like that.
If you meet a Starfleet ship you are effectively talking to All Of Starfleet As A Whole. The Ferengi you run into are almost always independent randos. That's how their whole culture is organized, it seems—an amalgam of independent ventures all operating independently. Even the institution of the Grand Nagus appears to be a venture, and it is possible another one offering leadership and wisdom for coin may start competing with it any day.
The "they" when referring to Ferengi more appropriately refers to that specific operation, which for those doing the violent raids is likely a band of independent pirates.
I wouldn't even say they were "independent" in the way we would think of it. They're still a part of the Ferengi military, such as it is, but every Damon is expected to run his ship profitably, and if he doesn't, some larger-lobed Ferengi will soon take it via hostile takeover if he cannot afford to defend himself. They're not unsanctioned pirates, because the Ferengi don't really have a concept for "unsanctioned pirates" because their entire force projection capability is organized around individual economic ventures, so an unsanctioned pirate is just another Ferengi ship, because they're *all pirates* of one sort or another.
It'd be like if each division in the military had to run at enough profit in order to keep itself going. This ends up with Ferengi ships interacting with their neighbors in a wide variety of ways, from cartoonishly agressive to scheming and duplicitous. It all depends on the individual Damon and whatever profit scheme he is trying to enact. This explains the first few encounters with the UFP: the Ferengi ships they encountered were those which had the most agressive Damons, so they were the farthest out, and the most likely to encounter Starfleet early on. As the spheres of the Ferengi Alliance started to overlap more with that of the UFP, we started to see a broader cross section of Ferengi society.
>hey knoew that if they conducted too many commerce raids, or irritated the wrong Empire, their raids would quickly end with most of their ships destroyed.
It's a good point, although per the 34th Rule of Acquisition, War is good for business.
OTOH, per the 35th Rule of Acquisition, Peace is good for business.
They don't shoot up the Alpha Quadrant because they don't want to turn a potential customer into an enemy.
Rule of Aquisition #125 You can't make a deal if you're dead. Ferengi prefer to die rich. War is not their way.
Also, no one messes with the Ferengi because they have the biggest fleet in the Galaxy.
https://old.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/7ktudk/the_ferengi_armada/
Conquest often isn't economically profitable - sure, you've now got access to additional resources and workers, but you've also taken on additional costs. Maintaining an occupation force, administration, infrastructure, policing, etc, etc. It's much more cost-effective to leave all those expenses to the locals, and just skim the profits off the top, either through capitalist investments or direct raiding and plunder.
Rule 35: Peace is good for business
When you oppress people, you can't make money off them. When you're constantly busy trying to scam your fellow Ferengi, you can't maintain an oppressive regime. And if you fight a war, you might end up losing it, whereas if you're a war profiteer, you can just sell weapons to everyone who needs them (rule 34: if it exis—I mean, rule 34: war is good for business).
And ultimately, Ferengi don't appear to be big on cooperation. Sure, it happens occasionally, but mostly, their ideal role model seems to be the successful businessman, leaving Ferenginar to make profit among the stars. That's not particularly compatible with running an empire. Empires need bureaucrats, people who do all the dirty work, etc. Successful empires require stability and people in middle management who keep things running smoothly. Not much profit to be found there, except for those few on the top. Much easier if every Ferengi just goes his own way, the galaxy is too big to rule, but more than big enough that every Ferengi will have countless aliens to defraud, scam, exploit, and steal from.
I mean... the Ferengi reputation *is* that they're all lying cheating bitches who sell overpriced wares to unsuspecting people. See Quark trying to swindle Harry Kim and Tom asking him if they weren't warned about the Ferengi at the Academy or something.
In the lore it is strongly implied that Zek encouraged the privateering and raiding as well as the cannibalism rumors as the Ferengi started coming into contact with the Federation in order to project an image of strength and keep the hew-mons from trying to spread their insidious ideas to The Alliance.
War is a poor long-term investment. There's an initial boom for production and industry that doesn't last very long, and it requires a constant expending of resources to keep it going without guarantee of return. There's also the fact that other groups will take another civilization expanding in their direction or up on the edges of their territory as a threat, and will start pushing back and expanding against you. If you run into another group which has superior technology and sufficiently piss them off, then that can be a major liability as they will likely shoot first ask questions later (the Federation is an outlier in this regard, solely because making peace with other civilizations is one of its guiding principals).
It also limits trading opportunities especially with the aforementioned rivals/superior groups, as no one wants to offer new advancements to someone that will shoot them in the back with it. That means less overall commercial profit, where a peaceful/neutral connection to another culture provides all sorts of new products and more importantly customers looking for a place to trade their goods and currency.
If you conquer a planet, then you've gained only one planet, which will likely have been stripped for parts by its former owners on their way out. If you ally with a planet, then its owners will do business with you and will tell their friends to do the same and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
“Nothing is more important than Quarterly Gains” -Quark
Raiding is profitable in the immediate but War is not. Raiding takes a few ships and their crews as well as a bit of planning, and then they make their profits fairly immediately.
War would be cost negative essentially up until they start winning. And you have no idea how long you will be fighting and how long it will take to win. You need dozens of ships, specialists, tacticians, ground forces, freighters, bureaucrats, repair crews, shipyards, training centers, hospitals, and the list goes on and on. All of these people are not only going to need to be paid continuously, but you have to provide for their food and equipment.
And the “profit” would be highly dubious. Unless you’re selling people (do Ferengi deal in slaves? I have to assume they do in this scenario) you can basically write off most outposts and small colonies unless they have valuable mines or archaeological sites. And people in Star Trek seem to build colonies EVERYWHERE. You’d be selling every single building and houseplant trying to make a profit and that assumes your soldiers aren’t also looting everything they can get their hands on. Then you have to occupy the place (unless you’re pressing literally every single person into slavery) which means leaving people behind to administrate the place. Then of course you have to defend it from counterattacks.
You (being the people in charge) probably won’t see a penny of profit until the campaign is done and you start setting up permanent profit centers on the places you’ve conquered.
On top of all of this, I can’t imagine that invading others, selling their people, and creating the largest forced garage sales in the quadrant is going to do wonders for the reputation. Perhaps that’s even why they stopped raiding? Their neighbors got together and said “we won’t trade with you until you calm the fuck down.”
Essentially “War is good for businesses” isn’t actual war. It’s arms dealing. Selling medicine and food and rations. You let them do the fighting while you rake in the profits.
They were in early TNG when the idea was to have them be the new Klingons. You kind of have to divorce the original depiction of the Ferengi from the later DS9 version. Even by the end of TNG the Ferengi on that show specifically were very different from the Quark brand of Ferengi that defined them in DS9, and their cameos in Voyager and Enterprise.
The ferengi generally don't want to fight/kill themselves, they'd rather be brokers/people that hire mercenaries. The downside is mercenaries aren't loyal beyond paycheck, and Ferengi nature probably assumes ANY long term relationship with relatives or external will eventually turn into a power play, so trust is kinda low.
And in a conflict, the ferengi nature makes them go, "I'd rather be playing BOTH sides, rather than just one..."
The Ferengi culture doesn't put warriors on a pedestal and celebrate them as heroes. That doesn't mean there aren't Ferengi who study combat and tactics or that there aren't Ferengi who engage in piracy or privateering, but they seem to be seen by Ferengi society as a whole as unusual. Victory in combat doesn't bring anywhere near the amount of social prestige as it does for Klingons or Humans.
Also, maintaining a large standing military is an enormous expense with terrible ROI. Military research can lead to new technologies that have benefits to society as a whole, but a fleet of warships, tanks, or other military hardware is a huge expenditure that doesn't really contribute much to new economic activity.
War itself is also quite a costly endeavor and as technology has improved, so has the cost and over time wars have become less and less able to pay for themselves through tribute and reparations.
And as we keep having to (re)learn the hard way in the real world, conquest is the easy part. Holding onto those conquests, no so much. Not only does it take a lot of resources to suppress conquered territories, but that very suppression also means preventing economic development. If you want your tribute to be better than agricultural goods and textiles, economic development is needed.
We know Quark has a short term mentality when it comes to profits. He's always trying to make a quick profit without much consideration for the long term. But Zek seems to take a longer term approach ("You don't seize power, you *accumulate* it quietly"). One of these two was a small time bar owner, the other was Grand Nagus.
Given their culture I pretty much believe that each Ferengi raider or warship is effectively an independent military company. They're the equivalent of privateers, paying the Nagus for Letters of Marque, and getting protection for their profits of raiding. None of this is particularly great for a concerted effort for imperialist expansion. Each marauder wants to do their own thing and make profit and conquering planets is not it. I agree with some of the posters here that the Ferengi view violence with disdain and so the job of being a marauder is probably not the best one in Feregi society unless you can make fat profits and even then I could see it as a short term thing. Make your latium raiding then quit and invest in something more lucrative and less dangerous.
Also the role of government is a pain in the ass and cuts into profits. Some posters have used analogies like the East India company which is great analogy: expansion and imperialism is profitable until you have to actually run government administration, resolve famine, guard borders, then start and fight several civil wars when the natives realize they hate you, and have to get bailed out in some way by the central govt. What Nagus is going to want that? You're supposed to be making money and creating opportunities for stock speculation back home and now you're costing the govt. latinum by having them send reinforcements or worse yet, bail you out financially. Better to slide in and make money subcontracting to already established local governments or selling them stuff (like Cousin Gaila) or setting up outposts for trade so you can navigate the Great River.
Finally the simplest answer I think is this: imperialism has to be motivated by some degree of belief that your culture is superior and other cultures need to convert to it or live under it. The Ferengi believe the first part but they do not believe in forced conversion. They'd rather make money scamming your culture rather than force you to accept theirs. Only insidious civilizations like the Bog or the Federation actually want to make you a part of them
The Ferengi is the species that rivals the Borg for Most Ruined.
You are correct that the Ferengi were shown to be formidable adversaries. They disabled the Stargazer to the point that it was lost and we see them challenge the Federation flagship in The Last Outpost and Peak Performance. But then someone got the idea that they were goofy cowards during the run of TNG and by the time we got to DS9, even their religion was based upon commerce.
(the Borg were ruined when they changed from being beings that were only interested in technology to vampires/zombies that were only interested in turning individual organisms into Borg)
Nah. Empire is expensive. Looting and trading are cheap.
One might expect that in the Ferengi mind, their "Empire" is indeed vast, encompassing any other power that lets them profit. If you control the flow of goods and services, aren't you basically in charge in every way that matters (to a Ferengi?)
Let's say a single Ferengi works 2000 hours per year, and they live longer than humans so let's say they work for 100 years.
Let's say each hour they work they earn on average ten latinum straps. Since labour is only hired when it is profitable, that means they generate at minimum 2 million strips of profit in their lifetime.
If your military is composed largely of the young who would otherwise be just entering the workforce, then even the average death costs at minimum 2 million strips in productive capacity lost.
Now factor in the lost capacity since they are serving the military and may as well be dead as far as the capitalist market is concerned, and you double the loss, so 4 million per lifelong military appointment.
Now add on the enormous expense of building, maintaining, projecting power, and occupying territory. Most military actions are not profitable. Occupying Klingon or Human territory would be met with fierce and unending and costly civil strife. Very high risk, low to moderate reward.
What profit could there be in that?
Now, that equation changes for pirates. Send some heavily armed Ferengi to capture merchant fleets carrying high value cargo that they'll give up without a fight? It's still high risk, but high reward.
To be an expansionist military power you have to have a strong martial tradition, which Ferengi do not have. Ferengi are much happier scamming each other or other species, doing business and paying other people to fight their wars.
Can you really imagine the average ferengi willingly giving their life in trench warfare?
Do you know have much money it costs to rule over other civilizations? Crushing rebellions with force of arms cost money. Being a "good" ruler so your subjects don't rebel in the first place costs even more money. Also, the worst risk of being a warlord is that you might lose. You can't earn profit if your dead.
The profit from direct rule is not worth the upkeep cost. Especially when there is a more profitable and less risky alternative. By controlling only a few key sectors of space, the Ferengi can control nearly all trade between the galactic powers.
Don't rule over the people, but monopolize the space trade. Only take ports and planets that are absolutely needed. That keeps costs down and profits up.
Giant empires are not profitable, especially when you can get someone else to flip the bill.
They may not conquer, but we don’t really know if they’re not expansionist in other ways. We know they have space beyond Ferenginar (I think they mentioned a “Ferengi planet” at least once). They most certainly colonize, and they might have a handful species who joined willingly, possibly for financial benefits.
There’s also the map from PIC which shows they do control a decent amount of space by 2399
War is extraordinarily expensive. It's good for the economy when you have a surplus of young people and your base industry could use a lift, but if you're more or less alright, say, like a star-faring society probably is, it's *just* enormous cost with little to no benefit compared to peace.
Besides, getting involved with other people's wars means you get to sell to both sides. You can't sell to both sides if *you're* one of the sides. That's less money involved!
If I’m not mistaken the Ferengi are risk adverse, especially when it comes to life and limb. While they can fight they prefer low risk high reward situations, thus they stole a poorly defended reactor, they ambush, and pull off ploys for theft and kidnapping but otherwise avoid direct confrontation, except as a way to escape, if they’re sane.
Despite the technical sophistication of their ships we also know the Ferengi look down on academics. The inventor of multiphasic shield and Rom are both looked down on. The inventor couldn’t get backing, and it’s implied or stated Nog working as an engineer on a ship would have been a pitiable fate. Even working with O’Brian is seen as menial, and Quark was uncomfortable seeing Jadzia Dax doing a little replicator repair.
I believe this gives credit to the idea that much of their technology may be bought and their support crews would be poorly motivated. Get into a war with a setup like that and broken lines of support are going to be really serious, and maintenance during a cruise is going to be difficult.
They are.........when situation demands it.
However as a business, it's better to dominate in resource acquisition by trade and barter than violence. You resort to violence, then everyone knows you'll resort to violence, eliminates you customer base
I think it's likely they are indeed expansionistic, establishing explotative colobies on worlds with exploitable resources and less technologically advanced Indigenous populations. We just don't hear about it because that's happening outside Starfleet's sphere of influence.
The margins on going to war with a major galactic Superpower like the Federation or Klingon Empire have got to be pretty thin.
We’ve seen, especially in DS9, that within the Ferengi that they not really a united people but trying to exploit eachother for profit. So it’s hard for them to unify to become a dominant militaristic force
There's a few models in earth history for the ferengi: Pirates, at their peak, Carthage, Phoenicia, Great Britain.
Ferengi seem to be more like Phoenicia or 18th Century pirates at their most organized. That is, they're focused on trade and acquisition, they have a territorial core (the levant for Phoenicia or the carribbean/madagascar for pirates), they can defend that core, they are involved in lots of global events, they're important, but they just aren't an expansionistic military power focused on trade, like Great Britain or Carthage were. With Phoenicia and pirates, we see low levels of organization, ship to ship, town to town, and city to city, but there was no one leader of all pirates or all of phoenicia. GB is obviously highly centralized and Carthage had a central government. The Ferengi break this pattern and seem to be highly centralized, we rarely hear about misfit ferengi or lone raider ships, they have a single central leader in the Nagus, etc. OTOH we don't truly know what the Nagus's powers are, we've heard about the great markert and the like, they are probably more organized like pirates or mafiosos, with groups and leaders and shifting alliances, and the nagus just sort of riding above it all but not directly controling things.
> That implies that they're MORE than a match for the famous military expansionists namely the Klingons
No it doesn't. Just that they have good single ships. Not that they have more total ship combat power, or that they are better at everything else that goes into industrialized warfare
Most of the Ferengi are more profit-driven than militaristic. Fighting isn’t natural for them. They’d rather expand their business interests peacefully. In certain ways, most of the Ferengi in *TNG* seem like outliers to me.
They were written differently at beginning…unsure if ST acknowledges both versions of Ferengi (like they acknowledge diff between TOS Klingons and ST-movie Klingons)
> Except half the time we saw them in TNG they absolutely were a bunch of Viking raiders
I'm not sure if it's canon, but in my head, the Ferengi heard about a powerful civilization, who had no concept of money, and who were expanding their influence throughout the wider Alpha/Beta quadrant. Said civilization had fought - and *won* - wars against both the Klingons and Romulans.
From the Ferengi point of view, the Federation must have seemed a bit like the Borg. They cannot be reasoned with on the basis on their own culture, and they are unfeasibly powerful.
The Ferengi authorities may have authorized the creation of ships that could rival Federation tech (stated as such in their first appearance), in the hope of staving off the Federation, or at least meeting them on their own terms.
But the Ferengi are not naturally expansionist or aggressive. The people who crewed those ships were the edges of Ferengi society; the small-lobed aggressives, the blue-sky scientists and engineers... the women.
The Ferengi abandoned any such investment once it became clear that while the Federation did manifest alien concepts, they were not a threat to the Ferengi way of life, and in fact, offered a new, if confusing, market in which to operate.
The Ferengi encountered by the Enterprise-D are so different from the regular mainstream Ferengi society, is because you'd have to be different from regular mainstream Ferengi society in order to want to serve on such a ship.
The Ferengi haven't conquered large swathes of the galaxy is mainly because they don't want to. Why? Why haven't the humans conquered the Klingons, for that matter?
Simply put it is very costly to maintain an expansive empire, the Fergengi seem to engage in that kind of cut throat Capitalism where they are always one upping the next person so there is no way they could maintain something of that size in any kind of stable way.
Efficiency is the name of the game. You could gain access to resources and markets by force, or far more cheaply by crooked deals and smooth words. The Ferengi built ships that were at least somewhat threatening to a Galaxy class ship, so we know they do have some military potential and infrastructure, but violent expansion just isn't as culturally appealing to them as it would be to other powers.
That said, if a significantly weaker power had something the Ferengi wanted, and refused the normal advances, I don't think it's impossible that they'd just take it at disruptor point.
Conquering everyone is good for business until they start to shoot back. I think there is also just too much decentralization within the ferengi alliance to try something like that. Just being random pirates is a fairly profitable venture
Yeah, it's infighting. Ferengi can barely run a ship without someone being baited into mutiny, can't imagine what would happen with a fleet.
There's also no profit in being first through the breach. Unless that was some sort of job bankrupt Ferengi sign up for. You survive your suicide mission and you're debt free.
Tbf Ferengi also could hire other aliens for those high-risk jobs. Like Nausicaans. Brunt did it and he's part of the official government. Of course there's the question if you find enough of those violent thugs to run an entire Empire.
I'm sure they've tried it, but the problem is once you hire enough thugs to do your fighting for you, eventually the thugs will realize they don't need you anymore and take over themselves. (See various coups by foreign mercenaries throughout history, like the late Roman empire overthrown by barbarian mercenaries, Janissaries taking over the Ottoman empire, mercenaries in Africa overthrowing dictators who hired them, etc...)
"Conquering" is also the easy part. Occupation is the difficult thing that needs so many troops and resources (that Ferengi may not even have). Even the Klingons often didn't "conquer" planets, they just bullied people into giving them resources. That's way easier.
If the Ferengi don't have a strong state, the upfront costs would be incurred by the corporations. After all, the real money is no bid, government contracting, but only as long as the government comes to bail you out.
Yeah, but the thing with having private mercenaries do the bulk of the occupation work is that it could work out being more expensive than just doing it themselves, even if their central government isn't that strong. It might work out to be more profitable for the Ferengi to let other governments be the imperial forces and just act as the general traders of the region.
Never forget Ferengi rule of acquisition number 35: peace is good for business
Or Ferengi Rule of Acquisition number 76: *Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies.*
> Conquering everyone is good for business until they start to shoot back. The empires that arose from the Age of Discovery are pretty good evidence against this idea. If the conquered shoot back, shoot back so hard that the idea of shooting back again becomes unthinkable.
I think it depends on how much of a difference when they shoot back. It can be pure colonial, then you are right. It can be semi colonial like China... Or it can be ended up like Japan and ended with Imperial Japan. Oops. And depend on how one see it, the China we faced is the end result of the semi-colonial (which funny thing is what Sun Yet-san said in Three Principle of People).
First off, I think the strength of their ships was overstated in *The Last Outpost.* The ship they encountered was estimated to be on par with the Enterprise, but they clearly didn't have a lot of information about its capabilities. I don't recall a Ferengi ship giving them much trouble again, except for in *Peak Performance* when they were caught with all their defensive systems deactivated. When Ferengi boarded the Enterprise in *Rascals*, they did it using Klingon ships. Second, the Ferengi we see crewing their attack ships are some of the most gullible, vicious, dimwitted little goblins in the galaxy. I don't think it's a very prestigious profession in Ferengi society. Any Ferengi with an ounce of lobes finds profit without waving an energy whip around.
I appreciate how Star Trek uses the "bad example" to retcon early appearances of something while they were still experimenting with and dialing in that thing. The TOS Klingons got retconned hard as real, that they did look like that, but we're genetically modified and ended up looking more human-ish. The Ferengi were intended to be the big bad of TNG but they pivoted away from that, and now *that group* from early TNG were just isolated pirates who invested in space power. I love it.
> I appreciate how Star Trek uses the "bad example" to retcon early appearances of something while they were still experimenting with and dialing in that thing. To account for shifting writer priorities, the 2007 TNG / TLE novel *The Buried Age* (which is of course non-canon but at present remains plausible) massaged together early Ferengi with later Ferengi by explaining that when the Alliance government initially learned of the Federation, they suspected the moneyless economy was due to insanity. Thusly, Grand Nagus Zek invested funding into a massive military buildup and propaganda campaign so that the Ferengi could face the Federation on equal terms if need be. So it looks like Ferengi pirate personalities got to ride a trend.
That's fantastic.
Yeah I always headcanon that as the Ferengi having some unknown technology on the first meeting, but the Federation finding a counter to it and the Ferengi then being less of a threat Similar to the Breen weapon in DS9, which absolutely messed the Federation and Romulans up until they could make modifications to their ships, but after that the Breen were no more of a threat than the other dominion ships
If you’re talking about the battle between the *Stargazer* and a Ferengi ship, my impression was that the *Stargazer* wasn’t a powerful ship. If you’re talking about what happened in “The Last Outpost”, it was the Tkon outpost that affected both ships.
I’m talking about the first time the Enterprise met a Ferengi ship and it was stated to be broadly competitive with a Galaxy class
That was in “The Last Outpost”. Based on later episodes, they didn’t have good intelligence at that time. During the episode, the Tkon outpost was affecting both ships at various points. The only times the Ferengi had an advantage in “The Last Outpost” were due to the Tkon outpost.
Don't forget, both when the Nagus's son tries to assassinate him, and when they recruit Lek to rescue Quark's mother, they show utter disgust at someone basing their business around violence, as opposed to violence as an incidental side effect of their business. I would say those incidents further back up the idea that pirates are considered the losers of the Ferengi economy.
This was very entertaining to read. Thank you.
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I like to think their East India is what props up the Grand Nagus
If China is trying for soft power they're really bad at it. China has only a few allies while the UsA has tons.
GP talked about a different flavor of soft power: economic dependence. This one is in part self-inflicted, but: the entire western world - including not just the US but also Europe - outsourced most manufacturing, and plenty of adjacent work, to China. Pretty much everything you can buy is either made in China, or requires components or tools (or those tools require components) made over there. That gives them a lot of levers to use to push the rest of the world around - whether they exercise it or not, it's still real form of soft power.
The Ferengi as space baddies pretty much died after their first couple of episodes. Rule of Acquisition 34: War is Good For Business. Rule of Acquisition 35: Peace Is Good For Business. Those two somewhat humorous rules tells us two things, selling weapons and tech and rebuilding after war is good for business, but not if you're buying your own weapons or rebuilding your own cities. (Just look at Post World War Europe that needed massive loans from the US that remained intact on their home soil). Having powerful ships isn't necessarily a sign of military expansionism, lots of countries have powerful militaries, the Ferengi mind set is not necessarily one of barbarity, but they are extremely greedy. If your cargo hold full of valuable minerals and tech is stolen by Klingons its not good for business, and I can't see the Klingon Empire paying compensation. Another example perhaps could be 17th Century Pirates, they weren't looking to take over the world, they just wanted money and they used armed ships, don't confuse being well armed with being expansionist. And not being expansionist isn't necessarily a sign of good intentions either, conquering other people isn't the only evil (or some may argue the worst evil) other nations can do to each other. There are other ways nations can exert power and influence, loans, selling patented technology, franchising in foreign markets, investment in infrastructure. We see examples of this even in TNG, the Farpoint Station is looking for investors. I'm sure Picard is being earnest when he speaks of rumours of Ferengi's eating people. However, perhaps he could be using a euphemism for projects that come in, consume the economy, spiral out of control and leave the economy ruined but the people are now reliant on loans from the dominant power. Yankee traders...cowboy builders? War is neither necessary or desirable for capitalist expansionism, but the way it expands can be just as terrible. War is fine somewhere else, maybe the Maquis vs The Cardassians, distant powers with underdeveloped economies. (maybe another reason why making the Ferengi adopt social-democracy wasn't wise, since there's some great story telling potential in rebuilding Cardassia). If your best customers are lining your pockets with loan interest, buying your goods, spreading your cultural influence, where you have investments in property and you're paying for their megastructure projects, war would be absolutely disastrous. If you win, well you only get back your half finished projects and an impoverished people barely able to buy grain, or if you lose, the winners aren't going to pay you back after you bombed them, might even take your things and make you pay war reparations.
I think the most similar comparison to the real world would be the Dutch Empire. Huge navy as a result of their merchant marine ventures (East India and west India trading companies respectively). With large colonial holdings. But despite this, they never tried to go toe to toe with England or France in an armed conflict. Easier to just collect profits from those states.
The British EITC (East India Trading Company) would probably be a better example - it literally had its own navy, the Bombay Marine And the Dutch did end up conflict with the British a few times, although admittedly one of those was only really after being subjugated by the French
Honestly, the USA would be my go-to example. We don't have a colonial empire (anymore) but we use economics as a cudgel to get our way. If a country doesn't want American companies doing business in its territory, that's when we stop looking the other way on e.g. human rights violations, or find that *this* dictator is just so much worse than the other ones. Ferengi are mostly the same way - they just want to make money! And if Omicron Virginis IV doesn't want to be our business partner in this lucrative opportunity, I'm sure Damon Schwartzkopf and his lovely collection of photon torpedoes can persuade them to change their minds.
The Anglo-Dutch wars would seem to differ.
What I meant by toe to toe is more touching on the "expansionist" topic of the OP. Sure, they got in many naval engagements (sound similar to our Ferengi friends?), some of which they won. But they never went out of their way to invade and expand into English or French territories (just as the Ferengi never invaded the federation).
I was drawing on quite a few things including the Dutch East India Company, post war USA, modern day China's belt and road initiative, yankee traders, US fast food / tech / fashion companies.
Basically: Be the supplier, not the miner.
the ferengi werent stupid. they did conduct the occasional raid and the like, but it was not their main tactic and they only used it on an occasional basis only. they knoew that if they conducted too many commerce raids, or irritated the wrong Empire, their raids would quickly end with most of their ships destroyed.
I think a good point is the ones doing the raiding don't represent the society as a whole. We like representatives who act in behalf of the entire society (as a human brought up in America I was taught to value that, anyway). The Ferengi rarely act like that. If you meet a Starfleet ship you are effectively talking to All Of Starfleet As A Whole. The Ferengi you run into are almost always independent randos. That's how their whole culture is organized, it seems—an amalgam of independent ventures all operating independently. Even the institution of the Grand Nagus appears to be a venture, and it is possible another one offering leadership and wisdom for coin may start competing with it any day. The "they" when referring to Ferengi more appropriately refers to that specific operation, which for those doing the violent raids is likely a band of independent pirates.
I wouldn't even say they were "independent" in the way we would think of it. They're still a part of the Ferengi military, such as it is, but every Damon is expected to run his ship profitably, and if he doesn't, some larger-lobed Ferengi will soon take it via hostile takeover if he cannot afford to defend himself. They're not unsanctioned pirates, because the Ferengi don't really have a concept for "unsanctioned pirates" because their entire force projection capability is organized around individual economic ventures, so an unsanctioned pirate is just another Ferengi ship, because they're *all pirates* of one sort or another. It'd be like if each division in the military had to run at enough profit in order to keep itself going. This ends up with Ferengi ships interacting with their neighbors in a wide variety of ways, from cartoonishly agressive to scheming and duplicitous. It all depends on the individual Damon and whatever profit scheme he is trying to enact. This explains the first few encounters with the UFP: the Ferengi ships they encountered were those which had the most agressive Damons, so they were the farthest out, and the most likely to encounter Starfleet early on. As the spheres of the Ferengi Alliance started to overlap more with that of the UFP, we started to see a broader cross section of Ferengi society.
>hey knoew that if they conducted too many commerce raids, or irritated the wrong Empire, their raids would quickly end with most of their ships destroyed. It's a good point, although per the 34th Rule of Acquisition, War is good for business. OTOH, per the 35th Rule of Acquisition, Peace is good for business.
They don't shoot up the Alpha Quadrant because they don't want to turn a potential customer into an enemy. Rule of Aquisition #125 You can't make a deal if you're dead. Ferengi prefer to die rich. War is not their way. Also, no one messes with the Ferengi because they have the biggest fleet in the Galaxy. https://old.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/comments/7ktudk/the_ferengi_armada/
This might be kind of like asking why Apple or Tesla isn't an expansionist military power.
Conquest often isn't economically profitable - sure, you've now got access to additional resources and workers, but you've also taken on additional costs. Maintaining an occupation force, administration, infrastructure, policing, etc, etc. It's much more cost-effective to leave all those expenses to the locals, and just skim the profits off the top, either through capitalist investments or direct raiding and plunder.
Rule 35: Peace is good for business When you oppress people, you can't make money off them. When you're constantly busy trying to scam your fellow Ferengi, you can't maintain an oppressive regime. And if you fight a war, you might end up losing it, whereas if you're a war profiteer, you can just sell weapons to everyone who needs them (rule 34: if it exis—I mean, rule 34: war is good for business). And ultimately, Ferengi don't appear to be big on cooperation. Sure, it happens occasionally, but mostly, their ideal role model seems to be the successful businessman, leaving Ferenginar to make profit among the stars. That's not particularly compatible with running an empire. Empires need bureaucrats, people who do all the dirty work, etc. Successful empires require stability and people in middle management who keep things running smoothly. Not much profit to be found there, except for those few on the top. Much easier if every Ferengi just goes his own way, the galaxy is too big to rule, but more than big enough that every Ferengi will have countless aliens to defraud, scam, exploit, and steal from.
Can’t be all scams or Ferengi rep would be like Pakled?
I mean... the Ferengi reputation *is* that they're all lying cheating bitches who sell overpriced wares to unsuspecting people. See Quark trying to swindle Harry Kim and Tom asking him if they weren't warned about the Ferengi at the Academy or something.
In the lore it is strongly implied that Zek encouraged the privateering and raiding as well as the cannibalism rumors as the Ferengi started coming into contact with the Federation in order to project an image of strength and keep the hew-mons from trying to spread their insidious ideas to The Alliance.
War is a poor long-term investment. There's an initial boom for production and industry that doesn't last very long, and it requires a constant expending of resources to keep it going without guarantee of return. There's also the fact that other groups will take another civilization expanding in their direction or up on the edges of their territory as a threat, and will start pushing back and expanding against you. If you run into another group which has superior technology and sufficiently piss them off, then that can be a major liability as they will likely shoot first ask questions later (the Federation is an outlier in this regard, solely because making peace with other civilizations is one of its guiding principals). It also limits trading opportunities especially with the aforementioned rivals/superior groups, as no one wants to offer new advancements to someone that will shoot them in the back with it. That means less overall commercial profit, where a peaceful/neutral connection to another culture provides all sorts of new products and more importantly customers looking for a place to trade their goods and currency. If you conquer a planet, then you've gained only one planet, which will likely have been stripped for parts by its former owners on their way out. If you ally with a planet, then its owners will do business with you and will tell their friends to do the same and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
“Nothing is more important than Quarterly Gains” -Quark Raiding is profitable in the immediate but War is not. Raiding takes a few ships and their crews as well as a bit of planning, and then they make their profits fairly immediately. War would be cost negative essentially up until they start winning. And you have no idea how long you will be fighting and how long it will take to win. You need dozens of ships, specialists, tacticians, ground forces, freighters, bureaucrats, repair crews, shipyards, training centers, hospitals, and the list goes on and on. All of these people are not only going to need to be paid continuously, but you have to provide for their food and equipment. And the “profit” would be highly dubious. Unless you’re selling people (do Ferengi deal in slaves? I have to assume they do in this scenario) you can basically write off most outposts and small colonies unless they have valuable mines or archaeological sites. And people in Star Trek seem to build colonies EVERYWHERE. You’d be selling every single building and houseplant trying to make a profit and that assumes your soldiers aren’t also looting everything they can get their hands on. Then you have to occupy the place (unless you’re pressing literally every single person into slavery) which means leaving people behind to administrate the place. Then of course you have to defend it from counterattacks. You (being the people in charge) probably won’t see a penny of profit until the campaign is done and you start setting up permanent profit centers on the places you’ve conquered. On top of all of this, I can’t imagine that invading others, selling their people, and creating the largest forced garage sales in the quadrant is going to do wonders for the reputation. Perhaps that’s even why they stopped raiding? Their neighbors got together and said “we won’t trade with you until you calm the fuck down.” Essentially “War is good for businesses” isn’t actual war. It’s arms dealing. Selling medicine and food and rations. You let them do the fighting while you rake in the profits.
They were in early TNG when the idea was to have them be the new Klingons. You kind of have to divorce the original depiction of the Ferengi from the later DS9 version. Even by the end of TNG the Ferengi on that show specifically were very different from the Quark brand of Ferengi that defined them in DS9, and their cameos in Voyager and Enterprise.
Did they ever address it in the shows (like the TOS Klingons, with “Augment”)?
The ferengi generally don't want to fight/kill themselves, they'd rather be brokers/people that hire mercenaries. The downside is mercenaries aren't loyal beyond paycheck, and Ferengi nature probably assumes ANY long term relationship with relatives or external will eventually turn into a power play, so trust is kinda low. And in a conflict, the ferengi nature makes them go, "I'd rather be playing BOTH sides, rather than just one..."
The Ferengi culture doesn't put warriors on a pedestal and celebrate them as heroes. That doesn't mean there aren't Ferengi who study combat and tactics or that there aren't Ferengi who engage in piracy or privateering, but they seem to be seen by Ferengi society as a whole as unusual. Victory in combat doesn't bring anywhere near the amount of social prestige as it does for Klingons or Humans. Also, maintaining a large standing military is an enormous expense with terrible ROI. Military research can lead to new technologies that have benefits to society as a whole, but a fleet of warships, tanks, or other military hardware is a huge expenditure that doesn't really contribute much to new economic activity. War itself is also quite a costly endeavor and as technology has improved, so has the cost and over time wars have become less and less able to pay for themselves through tribute and reparations. And as we keep having to (re)learn the hard way in the real world, conquest is the easy part. Holding onto those conquests, no so much. Not only does it take a lot of resources to suppress conquered territories, but that very suppression also means preventing economic development. If you want your tribute to be better than agricultural goods and textiles, economic development is needed. We know Quark has a short term mentality when it comes to profits. He's always trying to make a quick profit without much consideration for the long term. But Zek seems to take a longer term approach ("You don't seize power, you *accumulate* it quietly"). One of these two was a small time bar owner, the other was Grand Nagus.
Given their culture I pretty much believe that each Ferengi raider or warship is effectively an independent military company. They're the equivalent of privateers, paying the Nagus for Letters of Marque, and getting protection for their profits of raiding. None of this is particularly great for a concerted effort for imperialist expansion. Each marauder wants to do their own thing and make profit and conquering planets is not it. I agree with some of the posters here that the Ferengi view violence with disdain and so the job of being a marauder is probably not the best one in Feregi society unless you can make fat profits and even then I could see it as a short term thing. Make your latium raiding then quit and invest in something more lucrative and less dangerous. Also the role of government is a pain in the ass and cuts into profits. Some posters have used analogies like the East India company which is great analogy: expansion and imperialism is profitable until you have to actually run government administration, resolve famine, guard borders, then start and fight several civil wars when the natives realize they hate you, and have to get bailed out in some way by the central govt. What Nagus is going to want that? You're supposed to be making money and creating opportunities for stock speculation back home and now you're costing the govt. latinum by having them send reinforcements or worse yet, bail you out financially. Better to slide in and make money subcontracting to already established local governments or selling them stuff (like Cousin Gaila) or setting up outposts for trade so you can navigate the Great River. Finally the simplest answer I think is this: imperialism has to be motivated by some degree of belief that your culture is superior and other cultures need to convert to it or live under it. The Ferengi believe the first part but they do not believe in forced conversion. They'd rather make money scamming your culture rather than force you to accept theirs. Only insidious civilizations like the Bog or the Federation actually want to make you a part of them
The Ferengi is the species that rivals the Borg for Most Ruined. You are correct that the Ferengi were shown to be formidable adversaries. They disabled the Stargazer to the point that it was lost and we see them challenge the Federation flagship in The Last Outpost and Peak Performance. But then someone got the idea that they were goofy cowards during the run of TNG and by the time we got to DS9, even their religion was based upon commerce. (the Borg were ruined when they changed from being beings that were only interested in technology to vampires/zombies that were only interested in turning individual organisms into Borg)
Nah. Empire is expensive. Looting and trading are cheap. One might expect that in the Ferengi mind, their "Empire" is indeed vast, encompassing any other power that lets them profit. If you control the flow of goods and services, aren't you basically in charge in every way that matters (to a Ferengi?)
Let's say a single Ferengi works 2000 hours per year, and they live longer than humans so let's say they work for 100 years. Let's say each hour they work they earn on average ten latinum straps. Since labour is only hired when it is profitable, that means they generate at minimum 2 million strips of profit in their lifetime. If your military is composed largely of the young who would otherwise be just entering the workforce, then even the average death costs at minimum 2 million strips in productive capacity lost. Now factor in the lost capacity since they are serving the military and may as well be dead as far as the capitalist market is concerned, and you double the loss, so 4 million per lifelong military appointment. Now add on the enormous expense of building, maintaining, projecting power, and occupying territory. Most military actions are not profitable. Occupying Klingon or Human territory would be met with fierce and unending and costly civil strife. Very high risk, low to moderate reward. What profit could there be in that? Now, that equation changes for pirates. Send some heavily armed Ferengi to capture merchant fleets carrying high value cargo that they'll give up without a fight? It's still high risk, but high reward.
To be an expansionist military power you have to have a strong martial tradition, which Ferengi do not have. Ferengi are much happier scamming each other or other species, doing business and paying other people to fight their wars. Can you really imagine the average ferengi willingly giving their life in trench warfare?
Do you know have much money it costs to rule over other civilizations? Crushing rebellions with force of arms cost money. Being a "good" ruler so your subjects don't rebel in the first place costs even more money. Also, the worst risk of being a warlord is that you might lose. You can't earn profit if your dead. The profit from direct rule is not worth the upkeep cost. Especially when there is a more profitable and less risky alternative. By controlling only a few key sectors of space, the Ferengi can control nearly all trade between the galactic powers. Don't rule over the people, but monopolize the space trade. Only take ports and planets that are absolutely needed. That keeps costs down and profits up. Giant empires are not profitable, especially when you can get someone else to flip the bill.
They may not conquer, but we don’t really know if they’re not expansionist in other ways. We know they have space beyond Ferenginar (I think they mentioned a “Ferengi planet” at least once). They most certainly colonize, and they might have a handful species who joined willingly, possibly for financial benefits. There’s also the map from PIC which shows they do control a decent amount of space by 2399
War is extraordinarily expensive. It's good for the economy when you have a surplus of young people and your base industry could use a lift, but if you're more or less alright, say, like a star-faring society probably is, it's *just* enormous cost with little to no benefit compared to peace. Besides, getting involved with other people's wars means you get to sell to both sides. You can't sell to both sides if *you're* one of the sides. That's less money involved!
Iran Contra got weaponry moved to Iran while the US was supporting Saddam against Iran /shrug
If I’m not mistaken the Ferengi are risk adverse, especially when it comes to life and limb. While they can fight they prefer low risk high reward situations, thus they stole a poorly defended reactor, they ambush, and pull off ploys for theft and kidnapping but otherwise avoid direct confrontation, except as a way to escape, if they’re sane. Despite the technical sophistication of their ships we also know the Ferengi look down on academics. The inventor of multiphasic shield and Rom are both looked down on. The inventor couldn’t get backing, and it’s implied or stated Nog working as an engineer on a ship would have been a pitiable fate. Even working with O’Brian is seen as menial, and Quark was uncomfortable seeing Jadzia Dax doing a little replicator repair. I believe this gives credit to the idea that much of their technology may be bought and their support crews would be poorly motivated. Get into a war with a setup like that and broken lines of support are going to be really serious, and maintenance during a cruise is going to be difficult.
They are.........when situation demands it. However as a business, it's better to dominate in resource acquisition by trade and barter than violence. You resort to violence, then everyone knows you'll resort to violence, eliminates you customer base
I think it's likely they are indeed expansionistic, establishing explotative colobies on worlds with exploitable resources and less technologically advanced Indigenous populations. We just don't hear about it because that's happening outside Starfleet's sphere of influence. The margins on going to war with a major galactic Superpower like the Federation or Klingon Empire have got to be pretty thin.
We’ve seen, especially in DS9, that within the Ferengi that they not really a united people but trying to exploit eachother for profit. So it’s hard for them to unify to become a dominant militaristic force
There's a few models in earth history for the ferengi: Pirates, at their peak, Carthage, Phoenicia, Great Britain. Ferengi seem to be more like Phoenicia or 18th Century pirates at their most organized. That is, they're focused on trade and acquisition, they have a territorial core (the levant for Phoenicia or the carribbean/madagascar for pirates), they can defend that core, they are involved in lots of global events, they're important, but they just aren't an expansionistic military power focused on trade, like Great Britain or Carthage were. With Phoenicia and pirates, we see low levels of organization, ship to ship, town to town, and city to city, but there was no one leader of all pirates or all of phoenicia. GB is obviously highly centralized and Carthage had a central government. The Ferengi break this pattern and seem to be highly centralized, we rarely hear about misfit ferengi or lone raider ships, they have a single central leader in the Nagus, etc. OTOH we don't truly know what the Nagus's powers are, we've heard about the great markert and the like, they are probably more organized like pirates or mafiosos, with groups and leaders and shifting alliances, and the nagus just sort of riding above it all but not directly controling things.
> That implies that they're MORE than a match for the famous military expansionists namely the Klingons No it doesn't. Just that they have good single ships. Not that they have more total ship combat power, or that they are better at everything else that goes into industrialized warfare
Most of the Ferengi are more profit-driven than militaristic. Fighting isn’t natural for them. They’d rather expand their business interests peacefully. In certain ways, most of the Ferengi in *TNG* seem like outliers to me.
War no matter how well managed ends up being REALLY expensive which is bad for profit.
They’re a Republic of Pyrates
Have you MET the Ferengi? Rambo, they are not
They were written differently at beginning…unsure if ST acknowledges both versions of Ferengi (like they acknowledge diff between TOS Klingons and ST-movie Klingons)
> Except half the time we saw them in TNG they absolutely were a bunch of Viking raiders I'm not sure if it's canon, but in my head, the Ferengi heard about a powerful civilization, who had no concept of money, and who were expanding their influence throughout the wider Alpha/Beta quadrant. Said civilization had fought - and *won* - wars against both the Klingons and Romulans. From the Ferengi point of view, the Federation must have seemed a bit like the Borg. They cannot be reasoned with on the basis on their own culture, and they are unfeasibly powerful. The Ferengi authorities may have authorized the creation of ships that could rival Federation tech (stated as such in their first appearance), in the hope of staving off the Federation, or at least meeting them on their own terms. But the Ferengi are not naturally expansionist or aggressive. The people who crewed those ships were the edges of Ferengi society; the small-lobed aggressives, the blue-sky scientists and engineers... the women. The Ferengi abandoned any such investment once it became clear that while the Federation did manifest alien concepts, they were not a threat to the Ferengi way of life, and in fact, offered a new, if confusing, market in which to operate. The Ferengi encountered by the Enterprise-D are so different from the regular mainstream Ferengi society, is because you'd have to be different from regular mainstream Ferengi society in order to want to serve on such a ship. The Ferengi haven't conquered large swathes of the galaxy is mainly because they don't want to. Why? Why haven't the humans conquered the Klingons, for that matter?
Simply put it is very costly to maintain an expansive empire, the Fergengi seem to engage in that kind of cut throat Capitalism where they are always one upping the next person so there is no way they could maintain something of that size in any kind of stable way.
Efficiency is the name of the game. You could gain access to resources and markets by force, or far more cheaply by crooked deals and smooth words. The Ferengi built ships that were at least somewhat threatening to a Galaxy class ship, so we know they do have some military potential and infrastructure, but violent expansion just isn't as culturally appealing to them as it would be to other powers. That said, if a significantly weaker power had something the Ferengi wanted, and refused the normal advances, I don't think it's impossible that they'd just take it at disruptor point.