Ferengi First Contact

It's been bothering me for a long while that the Ferengi were such an unknown to Starfleet circa 2364.  Even before Enterprise showed a couple of Ferengi pirates encountering an Earth ship and Ferengi (maybe the same pirates) making contact with Valakians in the 2150's, it didn't make much sense to me.

The Ferengi are traders, first and foremost, and the economy of Ferenginar features markets but seems to be based on a somewhat mercantilist philosophy.   Prior to first contact, Data described them as Yankee Traders in the sense of "the worst quality of capitalists", referring to the principle that the buyer should beware.   In other words, he was associating Yankee Traders with hucksters and shysters.  Hucksters are capitalists only in the grossest possible sense.

At any rate, however, the Ferengi economic system . . . whatever the particulars . . . would seem to be one which favors policies opening up trade.  The Ferengi were, if anything, too interested in opening up trade with the Dominion, for instance.

So the question remains as to why the Ferengi would've been a mystery to the Federation in 2364, despite many years of contact with other nearby powers (like the Cardassians), and despite individuals of their species being well-travelled (as seen by the 2150's Enterprise example, not to mention a Ferengi being assimilated by the Borg circa 1925).   After all, if we're going to compare with Americans, we can't forget Commodore Matthew Perry's "Black Ships" excursion to 'force open' trade with Japan.  The Ferengi ought to have been chomping at the bit to get their sharpened teeth into the succulent Federation trade routes. 

But instead, so far as we know, they were in virtual hiding.  Individual Ferengi were on the very border of the Federation around that time (Quark's bar on Terek Nor in orbit of Bajor supposedly dates from 2363), but the Federation only caught up with them because a Ferengi Marauder was unlucky enough to steal from a Federation outpost that happened to have Picard's Enterprise nearby.  (It's possible that this theft was the form of first contact the Ferengi were going for, i.e. that they were intentionally caught, but that's neither here nor there right now.  Even by this time they'd had at least a couple of decades to make contact, if not more.)

The fact that the Ferengi were so insular in regards to the Federation is perplexing, until one adds in another factor.

The Federation is commonly said to be communist.  It isn't, since communism and capitalism are scarcity-based economic models where scarce raw materials get value added by processing or manufacturing into other useful objects.  The Federation seems based more on a post-scarcity model (though raw materials are still needed of course), and the presence of replicators defeats the concept of value addition by process or manufacture.  When an object's value is not based on its intricacy and the labor to
create it but instead merely on its raw materials or energy content . .
. when an iPod and a cigarette lighter cost the same . . . modern
economics (whether collectivist or capitalist) is turned on its ear.

I would submit that the Ferengi Alliance knew about the Federation and were scared to death of it.   The fact that they knew of the Federation is shown by the statements of the Ferengi landing party during first contact on Delphi Ardu, suggesting some knowledge of Federation policy and disgust with it.   Unlike the Cardassians or other powers they had likely encountered, the Ferengi knew that the Federation's open, egalitarian society and particular economic model presented an existential threat to not only the Ferengi economy, but -- given how tied in their society and economics were, even to the point of religion -- the Federation was an existential threat to the Ferengi way of life.

So, the Ferengi economy might've managed to weather the introduction of replicators and so on, persevering by sheer will despite the obvious implications, and managing to find niche markets.  For instance, whereas something like modern Coca-Cola could be easily replicated, Ferengi Slug-o-Cola features live algae, and thus could not be replicated.  Similarly, latinum cannot be replicated, and when 'pressed' in with gold makes a scarce item useful as a currency.  (Though it seems that latinum was their currency well before replication was discovered . . . might've simply been a nice happenstance.)    Quark's Marauder Mo action figures might've had some sort of anti-replication technique employed.  Those with replicators might've managed to perform some sort of licensing fee for replication of particular objects, though enforcement of this seems complicated. 

There are, in other words, ways for the Ferengi to adapt, but they become increasingly absurd.   And the the closed and militaristic Cardassian Union or other lesser nearby powers, might not've been as big a blow to Ferengi absurdity as the open and charitable Federation.  Hence the existential threat.

And frankly, given what happened to the Ferengi over the course of the TNG era, I'd say that those Ferengi who might've viewed the Federation as an existential threat were right.   Rights for women, Nog as Nagus . . . the fact is, first contact with Starfleet was the death knell of Ferengi society as it existed in 2363.