That seems more like The Expanse than Star Trek. Although maybe with this new GrimTrek vibe they’re spacing people into the black on every episode…
Stranger
As soon as you do this - the previously ‘worthless’ mineral becomes quite valuable.
You have to negotiate them into paying you to take it off of their hands.
It’s not like you don’t have enormous quantities of wealth to trade with them.
No reason to lie about what it is worth, may as well trade fairly.
Diamonds are just Carbon.
Make some in the Replicator.
Trade it, trough a front-man.
Issues solved.
This society is roughly in tune with ours? The more you want it - the more you have to pay for it. It would be a ‘gold rush’ for them, and costly for us. Much better to get them to continue to think its worthless and (maybe a hazard) that they need our help to remove.
Although the Federation presents itself as being fair and egalitarian the evidence is that it is actually anything but based on Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country and the fact that every time an admiral appeared in The Next Generation show they were either conspiring to overthrow governments or infected with alien parasites that controlled their actions. Starfleet hosts more secret alien conspiracies and nefarious government agents than The X-Files.
Stranger
“Invaluable” isn’t enough to make it worth the plethora of dangers involved. Since I can travel at Warp 9 or better, I’ll eventually be able to find another planet with the same mineral. It’s well worth the wait.
I have the wealth of hundreds of planets behind me. Just my starship alone is worth more than the combined wealth of the planet several times over.
Better never let them enter the Federation and find out how they were scammed.
But they sent me to make these decisions and set up trade. Either because of my ethics, or because they are not aware of them. If they come behind me and undermine the commitments I make, there’s not much I can do about that, but that doesn’t stop me from negotiating in good faith on my part.
That decision isn’t up to you. You’ve been given orders to make contact.
Except the part where you are forcefully sternutated from McCoy.
Make it the entry cost to joining the federation and having access to all our ‘wonderful toys*’. They get medBeds, replicators, holodecks - we get the minerals.
Win-Win.
“This guy will make an excellent pats…I mean ‘captain’! Promote him at once and send him to Zulu Eridani 12 to convince the natives to trade their critical stockpiles of dicritical phlebotinum for common table salt!”
Stranger
SIGH Fine!
Since the planet is divided into dangerously armed groups, I would pick the United Nations as my contact group. The agreement can not involve advanced technology, but it would instead consist of our assistance in helping them solve what surely will be their many problems. Providing a solution to their deteriorating environment in exchange for what is, to them, a worthless mineral, would be a deal they couldn’t refuse.
I keep coming back to this ‘worthless’ idea - sure, it’s worthless to them ‘now’ - but as soon as an advanced society wants/needs it - they have to think - ‘this shit has some value - we either get rich or we wait and figure out why the other folks want it, I’ll bet we’ll be glad to keep it, its not hurting anything’.
Use a filter on the viewscreen, and broadcast on all frequencies appearing as a hideous monster, Satan Himself, or whatever. Declare sternly, ‘People of [planet name]! Prepare for invasion. You will become our food!’ Then remove the filter and say, ‘Just kidding. Actually, can we have your mineral?’
Well, then I resign my commission, hang out with some ex-pat Romulans for a while, develop a terminal brain illness, put together a crew that is entirely unremarkable except in how unlikable they are, get a bunch of people killed and almost wipe out organic life in the galaxy.
Where there are large deposits of the stuff, stun everyone in the general vicinity, take the stuff and split. When everyone awakens, they will have a mystery without a solution (they might even be able to exploit it for commercial profit - see: Roswell, NM). Precious materials secured, no harm done to the locals, report to Star Fleet as required and tell them everything is going great, repeat as needed.
This method wastes no time with setting up trade relations or any negotiations, troublesome or otherwise, nor is there risk of spreading global panic over revealing the existence of a clearly superior race. And keep in mind: if the locals are anything like 21st Century earthlings, they’re at least part savage and probably best avoided anyway.
It is the logical (if not entirely ethical) way to go… especially when dealing with shithole planets.
Just as Gene Roddenberry would have imagined it, if he were a fascist zombie king of a murderous brain-eating horde.
Stranger
Scan the system. Find an appropriately-sized asteroid and set it on a collision course for the planet. Make sure the asteroid will be easily detectable from the surface. Give the planet a week or two to shit themselves, then swoop in and destroy the asteroid with photon torpedoes (and some carefully pre-placed anti-matter on the asteroid). Then you can make contact with the government controlling the area with the mineral. Puts you in a much better bargaining position: “We just saved your asses. All we want in return is some beach sand.” The power you have to sterilize the planet and just take what you want can be left unstated. For now.
Doesn’t that cut both ways? So you agree to hand the guy an assortment of precious metals or whatever in exchange for the stuff that nobody else on the planet would buy from him — and, like you said, as soon as you do this, he knows that the previously ‘worthless’ material is quite valuable to you. “Wow,” he says, “I guess we’ve established that you really value this stuff, huh?”
“Well, yeah,” you reply. “Just like we’ve established that you really value these precious metals. That’s why we’re making this trade, right?”
(Incidentally, let me add that the first comic book I ever read involved aliens showing up to trade with the people of Earth, asking only for a bunch of seemingly-worthless stuff — sand from the Sahara, and snow from the Himalayas, and so on, and so on — and, well, most of it really was as worthless to them as it was to us; they didn’t actually give a crap about it, they just figured it was the best way to negotiate for, uh, the sixth item on their list? Might have been the seventh.)