Why don’t the post-lefties go for more Ferengi references in criticizing the “Marxist-Bezozists”? It’s the perfect illustration of their critique!

Consider: the grand negus has a functional meta-monopoly. He assigns specific trading monopolies to individual Ferengi actors... for a standing cut of the action. Those individual monopolists “compete” only with non-Ferengi actors.

That competition gives the appearance of hypercapitalist competition, but if the Ferengi ever achieved intergalactic (global) hegemony, it would be unmasked as simply state-authorizes monopolies.

This is why Ferengi are antagonists to post-scarcity societies that ruin their monopolies (Federation) but also Ferengi small firms (Quark’s) that buck the state monopoly.

In the meantime, Ferengi society is also rigidly ideological in its rhetoric, but the rhetoric is completely functionally opposed to the political economy they operate under. Ferengi society manages this by actively suppressing dissent through economic coercion.

Of course, the Ferengi are also a repackaging of classic anti-Semitic stereotypes (see also sexuality and gender, Ferengi norms of) so there is that!

Uh oh! Looks like my last tweet answered my first!