DS9: Business as Usual

[clearspira]

Unless I missed a lot, I think Quark was given the short end of the stick here. He was getting attitude from people whose job description includes shooting people dead and blowing up stuff, and not getting involved in other people's problems. Leave the weapons in the hands of people who are trained to use them but won't help you doesn't have that moral urgency to me... Then the author makes it clear that Quark was wrong all along by changing the story.

I think the connection to personal ownership of firearms is somewhat tenuous, and I didn't see this as a close equivalent of a Space Second Amendment story. I mean, "guns are bad" is certainly anti-second-amendment, but in the same way "fire is bad" would be against matches. It covers such a broad area that focusing on one specific seems mostly inaccurate.

It is worth noting though that the USA has fallen by the 24th century, there is no 2nd amendment. We don't even know what their gun laws are although given how this is a ''utopia'' where no one hunts anymore according to Archer I would guess at ''strict''.

[Jonathan101]

I just want to say I shook my head when Chuck said that Steve Berkhoffs' performance was a bit too "over the top".

This looked like one of his most subdued roles. Clearly Chuck has never seen Octopussy.

[Jonathan101]

@Darth Wedgius It does seem odd the DS9 crew seem so harsh on Quark, I'll agree - because it was explicitly said Quark's new associates sold not just to people like the Regent, but also legitimate resistance groups like the Bajorans fighting oppressive systems. I suppose it's part of the holier-than-thou dogma the Federation subscribes to - even selling to one tyrannical overlord is too far in their view. Though given DS9's shades of grey flavor, that too seems odd, especially given the lengths Sisko will go to sometimes in order to prevent conflict - bombing the Maquis colony with trilithium and deceiving the Romulans to enter the war, for example.

Sisko and the crew generally don't LIKE to do those things though, and only do them out or (real or imagined) necessity in the cause of saving lives. In the case of the Romulan thing he also gave himself just as much if not more hell for going through with it as he did Quark.

Quark is doing it out of the cause of making money, and even if it's a desperation thing, it's still rather less noble, and Quark himself might have said as much on any other day as he is established as generally trying to stay out of this particular business.

[Yukaphile]

Not in the case of bombing that colony - Sisko had no way to know it would work past purely intuition. It could have failed, and then he would have been no different than any other tyrant out there. And besides, it was being done to uphold a peace treat that was failing to keep the peace. And yet Sisko still gets in Quark's face over selling to those kind of people, even though on average, they also sell to rebel freedom fighters. Is it worth doing a little bad if you also do a little good too? That's what he did. You'd think he'd be able to see that.

[Jonathan101]

It doesn't seem at all like these arms dealers are selling to obviously horrible people so they can have enough money to spend on freedom fighters; they are doing it to make money and they don't make any distinctions, which Sisko realises. Quark realises it too- it just tries to forget.

The peace treaty might have been failing to keep the peace, but it hadn't yet failed and that was a bigger thing, plus allowing it to fail might have led to something worse. I'd also say he was banking on more than intuition but either way- again, difference is that Sisko was at least trying to prevent evil while the others were just trying to make a buck. It's a matter not just of the business Quark is engaging in, but of the company he is keeping in doing so.

He recognises that necessary evils exist, but he objects to profiting from them purely for personal gain.

[bronnt]

It is worth noting though that the USA has fallen by the 24th century, there is no 2nd amendment. We don't even know what their gun laws are although given how this is a ''utopia'' where no one hunts anymore according to Archer I would guess at ''strict''.

It does make me wonder if there's a similar provision in the charter for the Earth government, though. Even in an idealist society like the Federation, there may still be a legal argument that people can have personal weapons for self defense. My guess is that, at minimum, there's civilian-issue phasers which only have stun settings for people who are interested, and would still provide weapons for target shooting.

We know from "Field of Fire" that at least one human in the future was a weapons collector. Perhaps he was completely free to do so, or perhaps, being in Starfleet, he was able to get a license allowing him to collect weapons.

[Linkara]

I definitely think there's a difference to be made in individual ownership vs. what we see in the episode - large-scale sales without any regard to who the clientele is. Gaila's objection to selling to the General wasn't "But we're supporting the Regent and his honorable quest!" but rather "Selling to both sides in a war is incredibly dangerous and has to be handled with care." Quark was willing to claim that the weapons he sells are in self-defense, but there is no self-defense excuse for "murder 28 million people to 'set an example.'" And it's likely Sisko and Kira (and in turn the Federation) are aware of Hagath's full range of items he sells, which includes bioweapons. The Federation already is against interfering in internal matters, which includes resistance movements and rebellions unless it's a war they're participating in, so it's not surprising that they'd take a dim view of arms merchants who'd take advantage of internal matters to line their pockets just to kill people. After all, in terms of modern day comparison, just look at all the scandals throughout the USA's history of supplying arms to groups for the purposes of the Cold War and making regions destabilized and innocents killed. So yeah, them being against arms sellers like Hagath who can't exactly claim self-defense when he's selling bio-weapons is not all that shocking.

If there's one thing I kind of want to object to, it's that while it's funny, it's not fair to compare Janeway's situation to Quark's. There's a video floating out that humorously keeps track of how many torpedoes Voyager fires after the initial listing of how many they possess and pointing out that they can't just replicate new ones (assuming Voyager doesn't resupply off-screen, they went negative torpedoes fairly early in the journey). With a 70-year journey ahead and hostile forces constantly surrounding them, Voyager needs to trade for new supplies... which will include weapons. Plus the guy was a legitimate arms dealer, licensed and everything, vs. Quark who was illegally participating in arms sales (not that Sisko would approve of arms sales on the station anyway, legal or otherwise).

And hell, it should be noted that even in Babylon 5, which DID have people perfectly happy to participate and support rebellions and insurgencies as well as Arms Deals made on the station, was not okay with physical weapons actually passing through the station.

[TrueMetis]

@Darth Wedgius It does seem odd the DS9 crew seem so harsh on Quark, I'll agree - because it was explicitly said Quark's new associates sold not just to people like the Regent, but also legitimate resistance groups like the Bajorans fighting oppressive systems. I suppose it's part of the holier-than-thou dogma the Federation subscribes to - even selling to one tyrannical overlord is too far in their view. Though given DS9's shades of grey flavor, that too seems odd, especially given the lengths Sisko will go to sometimes in order to prevent conflict - bombing the Maquis colony with trilithium and deceiving the Romulans to enter the war, for example.

@Durandal_1707 Well, it wasn't my intention to hurt people. And it never is, yet that somehow keeps happening, doesn't it? Still, I'm sorry if it bruised any feelings, to anyone here.

You have the weirdest sense of morality I've ever fucking seen. You've condemned people in terrible situations doing horrible shit out of desperation and said those people were always evil. Now some asshole sells bio-weapons to tyrants for no reason but greed, but ideals that would condemn that are " holier-than-thou dogma". Whatever you are smoking keep it the fuck away from me because it obviously fucks with your head.

[Cheerilee]

I liked this episode, but it really portrayed Starfleet as a bunch of unsympathetic jerks.

Quark got in trouble with his people, literally nicknamed "Starfleet's favorite bartender", because of his friendliness with Starfleet, like that time when he broke with tradition and paid to settle a labour dispute. This resulted in his people literally demanding that he kill himself to prove himself as a true Ferengi, and he couldn't go through with it, resulting in his excommunication. And his Starfleet friends showed up to support him like in the ending scene of It's a Wonderful Life.

But one year later and that happy scene wasn't worth so much, as Quark explains to Dax that he's been forced to put his bar up as collateral for three different shady loans, and if he doesn't pay the loans off in one week his creditors are going to have him killed when they find out that they can't collect 300% of his bar.

Do Quark's Federation friends save him from this fate? Nope. Okay, maybe this is all news to them and they haven't had time to formulate a "save Quark" plan, but... Quark is seriously screwed and their friendship isn't saving him, it's what put him in this position to begin with.

So in desperation, he grabs at the first lifeline available to him, which is to sell weapons. And by-the-book Odo tries to arrest Quark on trumped-up charges that he knows will never hold water, because apparently Odo hates gun sales, even when they're legal gun sales. Sisko comes in to deliver Bajor's message to Odo. "This arms merchant is a friend to Bajor, who helped Bajor win it's freedom from Cardassian slavery and oppression while the mighty Federation hid behind it's Prime Directive, so stop harassing his employees while wearing a Bajoran uniform and working on this Bajoran-owned station." Well damn. That's a smackdown. But then, Sisko has to interject his own personal opinions and threatens Quark, telling him that his friendship with Quark is over. Because guns.

If you ever sell a gun, even if it's to save your own life, even if you're standing alongside the Hero of Bajor and selling to the good guys, then the "friends" who pushed you into this uncomfortable position will all turn on you, even if it means they have to break the law to do it.

Dax won't even speak to Quark. She puts the screws to his inner turmoil, calls him despicable, and accuses him of murdering people out of greed, even though the episode just proved that there can be positive weapon sales, and Dax is the only character that we can say knows for a fact that Quark took the job for the sake of his own survival, not greed (others may or may not know, but Dax absolutely does).

When Quark is faced with selling weapons to a genocidal madman, he's clearly not on board with that, and I don't think that had anything to do with Quark being influenced by his preachy Federation friends. He's never been interested in the dirty business of weapon sales. He's "a people person". But he's not allowed to refuse the sale, or he will be killed (again with the killing, everyone always wants to kill Quark). So, for the sake of 28 million people, he resolves to sabotage the sale, even if it means his own death (a sacrifice he wasn't able to go through with before, as apparently the lives of aliens are worth more to Quark than the respect of his people).

If a generally-good man like Quark hadn't been selling weapons that day, the sale would absolutely have gone through and 28 million people would have died.

Sisko seems to know what Quark did (correcting Quark, saying that "28 million and one" won't mind that the Regent's dead), but he still reads Quark the riot act, and drops a repair bill on Quark, shoveling more debt on him, when all that Sisko did to help was patch up some holes in a cargo bay. And Dax takes him back as if nothing ever happened. Like, I guess that maybe they're trying not to make things weird and are pretending to be dicks while deep down they really appreciate what Quark did and the risks he took to do it, but it seems like they all owe him a hell of a lot more than that, especially after how dickish they were to him throughout the episode.

[Formless One]

The Federation has a habit of questioning those things, unless it violates a treaty or the Prime Directive, that is.

The Prime Directive just says they won't directly intervene in internal affairs, but it doesn't necessarily mean they will turn a blind eye to the activities of interstellar civilizations in the Alpha Quadrant. After all, the guy was allowed to visit a station run by Starfleet. But if he started bombing planets from orbit, he might suddenly find himself persona-non-grata in Federation space, his fleets told to stay out of Federation space by a hardened post-359 Starfleet, and given the cold shoulder like he and his people were Cardassians in the build up to the Dominion War. The Federation doesn't intervene, but that doesn't mean it can't isolate hostile civilizations and put political pressure to stop doing evil things. That's how they got the Cardassians to leave Bajor, after all. The Cardassians didn't want to renew a full scale war with the Federation so soon, and its likely most civilizations would be even less keen on infuriating the most politically and economically influential power in the quadrant.