Ferengi Rules of Acquisition


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1
Once you have their money, you never give it back. DS9: "The Nagus", "Heart of Stone"
3
Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to. DS9: "The Maquis, Part II"
6
Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity.[1]DS9: "The Nagus"; ENT: "Acquisition"
7
Keep your ears open. DS9: "In the Hands of the Prophets"
9
Opportunity plus instinct equals profit. DS9: "The Storyteller"
10
Greed is eternal. DS9: "Prophet Motive"; VOY: "False Profits"
16
A deal is a deal.[2]DS9: "Melora"
17
A contract is a contract is a contract ... but only between Ferengi. DS9: "Body Parts"
18
A Ferengi without profit is no Ferengi at all. DS9: "Heart of Stone"
21
Never place friendship above profit. DS9: "Rules of Acquisition"
22
A wise man can hear profit in the wind. DS9: "Rules of Acquisition"; VOY: "False Profits"
23
Nothing is more important than your health ... except for your money. ENT: "Acquisition"
31
Never make fun of a Ferengi's mother.[3]DS9: "The Siege"
33
It never hurts to suck up to the boss.[4]DS9: "Rules of Acquisition", "The Dogs of War"
34
War is good for business[5]DS9: "Destiny", "The Siege of AR-558"
35
Peace is good for business.[6]TNG: "The Perfect Mate"; DS9: "Destiny"
45
Expand or die.[7]ENT: "Acquisition"; VOY: "False Profits"
47
Never trust a man wearing a better suit than your own. DS9: "Rivals"
48
The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife. DS9: "Rules of Acquisition"
57
Good customers are as rare as latinum. Treasure them. DS9: "Armageddon Game"
59
Free advice is seldom cheap. DS9: "Rules of Acquisition"
62
The riskier the road, the greater the profit. DS9: "Rules of Acquisition", "Little Green Men", "Business as Usual"
74
Knowledge equals profit. VOY: "Inside Man"
75
Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum. DS9: "Civil Defense"
76
Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies. DS9: "The Homecoming"
94
Females and finances don't mix. DS9: "Ferengi Love Songs", "Profit and Lace"
95
Expand or die.[7]VOY: "False Profits"; ENT: "Acquisition"
98
Every man has his price. DS9: "In the Pale Moonlight"
102
Nature decays, but latinum lasts forever. DS9: "The Jem'Hadar"
103
Sleep can interfere with...[8]DS9: "Rules of Acquisition"
109
Dignity and an empty sack is worth the sack. DS9: "Rivals"
111
Treat people in your debt like family ... exploit them. DS9: "Past Tense, Part I", "The Darkness and the Light"
112
Never have sex with the boss's sister. DS9: "Playing God"
125
You can't make a deal if you're dead. DS9: "The Siege of AR-558"
139
Wives serve, brothers inherit. DS9: "Necessary Evil"
168
Whisper your way to success. DS9: "Treachery, Faith and the Great River"
190
Hear all, trust nothing. DS9: "Call to Arms"
194
It's always good to know about new customers before they walk in your door.[9]DS9: "Whispers"
203
New customers are like razor-toothed gree-worms. They can be succulent, but sometimes they bite back. DS9: "Little Green Men"
208
Sometimes the only thing more dangerous than a question is an answer. DS9: "Ferengi Love Songs"
211
Employees are the rungs on the ladder of success. Don't hesitate to step on them. DS9: "Bar Association"
214
Never begin a negotiation on an empty stomach. DS9: "The Maquis, Part I"
217
You can't free a fish from water. DS9: "Past Tense, Part I"
223
(incomplete, but presumably concerned the relationship between "keeping busy" and "being successful") DS9: "Profit and Loss"
229
Latinum lasts longer than lust. DS9: "Ferengi Love Songs"
239
Never be afraid to mislabel a product.[10]DS9: "Body Parts"
263
Never allow doubt to tarnish your lust for latinum. DS9: "Bar Association"
285
No good deed ever goes unpunished. DS9: "The Collaborator", "The Sound of Her Voice"
Unknown
A man is only worth the sum of his possessions.[11]ENT: "Acquisition"

Didn't know if anyone has ever posted these!

from Memory Alpha Website

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The Ferengi certainly brought their own, lively & unique presence to ST DS9. I enjoyed most of the episodes.

-Joe

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The Ferengi certainly brought their own, lively & unique presence to ST DS9. I enjoyed most of the episodes. Joe

It was interesting the way the Ferenghi were portrayed. Ugly. Greedy. Yet they did not espouse a truly Capitalist morality and society. To the contrary, Rodenberry may have tried to say the Ferenghis were Capitalists because he saw Liberalism as enlightened but the Ferenghi were really about deception, exploitation, and Crony Capitalism which is really a variant of Fascism.

I also remember that Rod Serling who created The Twilight Zone, had similar misconceptions about Capitalism. Rand wrote in the sixties that she admired Rod Serling and he promptly wrote a TV summer show that ridiculed Objectivist thought.

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I also remember that Rod Serling who created The Twilight Zone, had similar misconceptions about Capitalism. Rand wrote in the sixties that she admired Rod Serling and he promptly wrote a TV summer show that ridiculed Objectivist thought.

Peter,

I looked around for Serling's show and came up with the following:

A Carol for Another Christmas (Wikipedia)

There are clips from it here (Turner Classic Movies).

Charles Dickens, meet Ayn Rand and Karl Marx on Walpurgis Night transposed to Xmas.

:smile:

Oddly enough, when Googling about this, I came across a curiosity. There's a Rand-bashing site called Ayn Rand Fun Facts!. Here is Ayn Rand Fun Fact # 48:

When Gentry International wanted to make a movie of Atlas Shrugged, Rand agreed on the condition that they get Rod Serling to write the screenplay. Gentry brought the proposition to Serling, and “Serling simply laughed—his laugh getting louder and longer the more he pondered it.”

I get amused at these folks. They really should stop it. Oh... the item was sourced in the Bibliography part of the site, but our bold blogger and champion of the underdog edited the context for spin and conveniently didn't say so. This reminds me of the way ARI authors and editors edit Rand's words and airbrush stuff out that doesn't fit their agenda.

There is nothing wrong with making a full quote or providing correct context or both.

Nothing.

People who present full quotes in context actually gain in credibility.

Duh...

:)

I came across a forum post by one TLR where the poster gives the full quote from Rod Serling: The Dreams and Nightmares of Life in the Twilight Zone/a Biography by Joel Engel.

... Rod Serling and Ayn Rand hated each other. So much so that...

From Joel Engel's Serling biography:

"Two years later, when Gentry International tried to develop a motion picture based on Rand's sprawling novel 'Atlas Shrugged,' the author granted conditional rights. Her sole stipulation: that Gentry hire Rod Serling to write the screenplay. This was either a true statement of her admiration or a deliciously devious way of turning down the request--akin to 'bring me the broomstick of the wicked witch of the west'--because Rand's self-determinate philosophy could not have been more opposed to Serling's. John Champion remembers that when Gentry pitched the request, Serling simply laughed--his laugh getting louder and longer the more he pondered it."

I presume this is the full quote. I'm going to check the book just to make sure, but that looks about right.

Michael

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In The Siege of AR-558 Quark unloads both barrels on Sisko. You hate us because we remind you of yourselves: greedy and selfish -- but Ferenginar never knew mass executions ... or slavery...



The Ferengi were the best that Star Trek had to offer, given that its premise was anagoric, if not anti-agoric. Roddenberry, of course, was a man of his time. He created Cyrano Jones and Harcourt Fenton Mudd, as his conceptions of traders. In ST:NG right away in the first season, they salvaged a ship of frozen individuals and had to explain to the businessman that in the future-present, we no longer pursue things, but seek to improve ourselves.



How StarFleet calculates without money is never clear: why build a mining colony here versus farming colony there or a space station somewhere else? Whose needs (or wants or claims) are recognized? They had some platonic republic, obviously, though Kirk punched out the head platonist in Plato's Children.



BTW, I have The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition compiled by Ira Stephen Behr from Pocketbooks.


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  • 5 years later...

I was curious how objectivists feel about the ferengi. They were created as the new villian for TNG, replacing the Kligons who were now the federation's ally. They were supposed to be the dark side of 'yankee capitalism' but they went so over the top they became more of a parody then a dark reflection. It is no wonder they were quickly replaced by

DS9 did a much better job because they used them more as a supporting role, rather then an antagonist.

Personally, I think Quark is a good exploration of the duel nature of capitalism. His constant scheming and plotting often causes problems the rest of the cast have to solve, but his talents have also solved his own share of problems and every now and then he sets profit aside for what he considers more important. All and all, a very deep and well rounded character.

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Phantom wrote: Personally, I think Quark is a good exploration of the duel nature of capitalism. His constant scheming and plotting often causes problems the rest of the cast have to solve, but his talents have also solved his own share of problems and every now and then he sets profit aside for what he considers more important. All and all, a very deep and well rounded character. end quote

Well said. Quark is mean, exploitative, and cruel yet also likeable. Occasionally he makes benevolent choices. And his family members are treated better than strangers. Two rules of acquisition for example, are not portrayed in Quark’s character except as dystopian ideals he never achieves. “No good deed ever goes unpunished,” and “A man is only worth the sum of his possessions.” He runs his bar so that patrons will return. If he ran it like an ideal Ferengi he would have far fewer patrons . . . and profit.

I wrote back in 2003. In the StarTrek series, Capitalism is considered anachronistic. The mercantile, alien Ferengi offer a corrupted “Prudent Predator” type of Capitalism, but generally all basic goods are plentiful on advanced planetary systems. Matter converters and the energy to operate them are extremely cheap in this fictional future. In “star date time” food is not scarce. Land is not scarce. People group together to accomplish projects such as space exploration and mutual defense. Yet, many of StarTrek’s ideals are Objectivist ideals and I see no contradiction because Capitalism is considered passé. Captain James P. Kirk and Captain Jean Luc Picard always barter for scarce goods when they are far from home, maintaining the glorious morality of Capitalism and free trade. One of the finest trading goods in the StarTrek future is information: Science and Technology.

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If you listen to Socialists like Bernie, the “freer” Americans become economically the more cruel and uncaring Americans will become.  I would say the opposite is true. If you listen to Bernie the freer the economy, the worse off the lower 20 percent of earning Americans will become. The opposite is true. In a freer economy there can be a greater disparity between the richest and the poorest but the fact that Amazon and Jeff Bezos are worth billions doesn’t hurt me in any way. That man creates jobs and they are talking about building a new distribution center in nearby Delaware with a thousand new jobs. Delaware is even offering financial incentives and is catching flak over that too.

The whole idea that Capitalists are uncaring Ferengi’s is ludicrous. Benevolence and charity go hand in hand with wealth. At least every week or so I hear about some millionaire or billionaire donating money to start a foundation or help out a hospital. Now the Clinton Foundation may have been founded by Ferengi’s but that’s old news.

And Capitalism raises the standard of living while controlling the means of production leads to a lower standard of living. Controlling the means of production leads to less freedom too. The evidence for that abounds.

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