I love how Quark seems to sell food and drink in his bar except it is usually all replicated on a standard food replicator - the same type as dozens of others that are all over the station and are apparently free to use by anyone??
I think the most likely explanation is that since DS9 is actually owned by the Bajorians, Quark is renting the space from them using money and they limit him to using his own replicator. Meanwhile, maybe only the command staff have replicators in their quarters and visitors don’t get them in their rooms? Perhaps that combined with him having custom recipes and such (along with a selection of actual non-replicated foods and drinks) plus the ambience and games is why people would pay him for it.
@bigzaphod since none of the Starfleet people have money, we really want to know more about the financial arrangement between Quark and the Federation. does the Federation pay a lump sum?
@bigzaphod wait, but he's renting the replicator and venue FROM the Federation. is the net balance towards the Federation? he's paying them to serve them drinks and feel like a capitalist?
like, that would be consistent with stuff today's capitalists occasionally do, so who knows, maybe he is.
@irenes@bigzaphod I always read DS9 as being this weird place at the interface between the Federation and monetary-based economies, especially as the station is only managed by the Federation on behalf of the truly fraught Cardassian/Bajor situation.
@irenes@bigzaphod From that perspective, is it the Federation charging rent, or is it the coalition government with the Federation administering the bill? It's never clearly defined, and frustratingly so, but feels like a giant gray area. I can't imagine the PADD-based paperwork needed to keep that place running.
@xgranade@irenes@bigzaphod I think Trek canon is just plain inconsistent about money. The first episode of ST:TNG opens with Dr. Crusher buying cloth at a market, for instance. And Picard, the series, talks about Picard's house having expensive furniture, he pays to hire a starship. Lower Decks mentions he paid an archaeologist to search for relics.
@foolishowl@irenes@bigzaphod That's completely fair, yeah. I was always thrown by the first episode of Voyager, when Paris and Kim both seemed to already have money to spend at DS9. Was it common for Starfleet officers to just randomly have pocket change? When would they use it outside of relatively rare shore leave?
@xgranade@foolishowl@irenes@bigzaphod if everything is provided for you it does make sense that people in starfleet who are likely to interact with societies that still use currency would be provided with some kind of stipend though. Also the federation probably does have money, since they engage in trade, which would require currency. that's probably where any money they need for interaction with other societies comes from
@irenes@xgranade@foolishowl@bigzaphod I sort of assume that there's some currency in the federation which is used for purchasing non replicable things and/or discretionary services, but that people's day to day needs are taken care of for free
@artemist@erincandescent@bigzaphod@irenes@foolishowl Voyager similarly had "replicator rations" come up a number of times, even to the degree of motivating Neelix as a character (sigh). Kind of points to energy being abundant only when ships are connected to some kind of a supply network?
@artemist@erincandescent@bigzaphod@irenes@foolishowl Discovery kind of doubled down on that, kind of contradicted it, in having The Burn end so much of the abundant energy supply while also introducing personal transporters, wrist-mounted weapon replicators, and so forth.
@irenes@foolishowl@bigzaphod Oh, goodness, and the complete weirdness of the Romulan refugees working there? There is some very... strange... worldbuilding going on.
@xgranade@foolishowl@bigzaphod it's worth keeping in mind that at no point in Star Trek history did Federation citizens ever learn how to actually dismantle systems of oppression
they had a war one side-effect of which was that all the oppression got dismantled and people were like, yeah, let's not bring that back
@irenes@foolishowl@bigzaphod I do think there's a form of radicalism to simply stating a wish that systems of oppression oppose, but I fully agree that that wish is incomplete and even incoherent, and that wish in and of itself isn't sufficient action.
@irenes@bigzaphod In Bar Association, it is established that the Federation, on behalf of the Bajoran Republic, does not collect rent on the space Quark’s Bar occupies.
Extrapolating from Sisko’s motivations in Emissary, Quark thus appears to be the beneficiary of Federation economic stimulus, and payments for replicated goods would agree neatly with such an arrangement
(this absorption of government subsidy is also of course perfectly on brand for the capitalist, to the contemporary eye)
It may be that the replicated goods represent a classic Free Lunch loss leader, intended to gather people in the bar and encourage their gambling, or the purchase of certain goods the replicator does not have the resolution to produce at high fidelity
it is implied at least since STII that spirits retain some degree of scarcity, via contraband Romulan Ale, and Guinan’s private stock of Aldebran Whiskey suggests the trend continues circa 2360
@danilo@bigzaphod interesting point. we WOULD have said people just enjoy the intangible aspect of knowing someone put their love into making the beverage or whatever
but if it's at the point where they need to smuggle it, it would be cheaper to counterfeit it instead (and to pass counterfeits off as contraband if necessary to get buy-in), and the supply of it is scarce enough that it clearly is not counterfeit
@danilo@bigzaphod this is what working in adtech does to you. for the rest of your life you automatically game things out like "that second-order scam doesn't make sense because of the third-order scam".
@danilo@irenes@bigzaphod people talk about replicated goods being inferior, so for high end booze it's entirely possible the replicator just spits our whiskey.stl which is cheap hooch
@fluffykittycat@irenes@bigzaphod Later, In the Pale Moonlight depicts Vreenak sniffing dismissively at the facsimile of Romulan Ale, suggesting the molecular complexity of certain spirits specifically may be outside the resolution of the replicator!
(though his dismissiveness of the ale is also a rhetorical device for his overall lack of persuasion, so)
Quark also laments a surplus inventory of Kanar, which means he's holding SOMETHING instead of replicating it, further adding to this case
@danilo@fluffykittycat@irenes@bigzaphod personally I think that the claim that replicated goods are inferior is a sort of hipster affectation. It is my head canon that a double blind taste test with replicated food would show that humans can’t actually tell the difference. The fact that spirits—mostly ethanol, famously themselves prone to anchoring bias and priming in taste tests—would be “not as good as the real thing” feels like metacommentary on consumer culture
@danilo@irenes@bigzaphod if I recall correctly in the first episode quark is packing up to go but sisko lets him have the bar space rent free to help keep businesses on the promenade and the place from being a ghost town, this was before the wormhole was discovered and it became the prime spot in the whole galaxy
@fluffykittycat@danilo@irenes@bigzaphod Lower Decks establishes that Quark has had huge success since the DS9 days with his specially branded Quark 2000 replicator, which gives his cocktails an "extra zing."
Turns out Quark stole the tech from the Karemma, who arrest him in the "Hear All Trust Nothing" episode, so there's that.
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