It's actually a curious question, because all civilizations have some form of trade/barter system and from that comes an economy. However, the only major Transformer who is money-hungry is Swindle. It'd be fascinating to see how the wealthiest of Cybertron (Autobot/Decepticon) would deal with the war or contribute to it.
Not anymore I'd say. But probably yes during the Cybertronian Golden Age, back when it wasn't a war-torn wasteland.
I stick pretty close to the G1 cartoon, so my knowledge is very limited on Cybertron's past, but I think at least during the time of Orion Pax, there were societies similiar to earth now,rich and poor. Since the war though,I doubt monetary values are considered on the planet.
Here he is: There's also this guy: Gutcruncher is a very ambitious mechanoid. He's bartered a deal to sell Autobot remains as scrap metal on various interstellar markets (including to the Junkions!), and there are rumors that some of those parts were from fellow Decepticons who stood in Gutcruncher's way up the ranks. He's incredibly cold and calculating, and even without his Stratotronic Jet vehicle, he's got the muscle and firepower to back up his plans. Autobots fear him because he's a ruthless force of nature on the battlefield. Decepticons fear him because he may have already calculated their net worth to some shady black-market metal-monger, and is merely awaiting the right opportunity to cash in. And Lockdown. On an unrelated note, I'd say that whatever Cybertron's economic situation was in the past, it probably doesn't have very much money now. A never-ending civil war that destroys most of your resources will do that to you. Also re: wealthy Cybertronians, the only G1 character that I know of who was specifically mentioned as wealthy from before the war was Mirage, as someone else already mentioned. Other characters, like Blast Off, are described as having an aristocratic attitude, but they aren't confirmed to have been members of high society like he was.
Wealthy for who? In our own reality we have nations considered wealthy superpowers when they have the some of the greatest proportions of those living there in poverty and without access to adequate and affordable food, housing, healthcare and education and with an ever increasing divide between their rich and poor. War economies tend to be great for a small minority of posh big business elites who supply weapons and healthcare to the people hurt by the wars themselves but rubbish for everyone else as they often get pressured and forced into their violent deaths to maintain the class status quo. It seems like given how cybertron is portrayed as a wasteland by the end of the war, they end up resource and environmentally poor but I imagine the real architects behind this destruction are cash rich and given how space travel is an option escaped off world to some other alien society that would act as their safe tax haven.
So with the war on, only black marketeers and war-profiteers would be considered the richest? That doesn't leave room for Autobots, as those guys would be Decepticons.
The autobots are not an unarmed civilian group as if they was they would have lost pretty early on which means they have their own suppliers of weapons too. It’s odd when you strip away them crossing the moral line of massacring aliens like us the reasons of why they are fighting each other and what differentiates the two groups from each other seems ill-defined and varies from continuity to continuity.
doubtful cybertron usually seems to be in the middle of a massive energy shortage of one kind or another. They probably tons of ancient relics that would sell for major credits on the interstellar black markets though. Stuff like the matrix starsaber and forge of solus must be each be worth a kings ransom.
What is wealth to an interplanetary society? No, seriously. Wealth is an accepted tool of commerce, it doesn't actually reflect anything real nor is it inherently stable. Wealth is entirely based on the supply and demand at the time of any culture and is in some ways more psychological than physical; the US paper money was valid for years because it could be exchanged for gold so that everyone knew that the note had value. Nowadays you can't redeem it for gold, but it still has an accepted value to it, even though it's really just specially colored cotton. There was a point when pepper and roses were worth small kingdoms, Thomas Jefferson was eager for the Louisiana Purchase because he was certain the territory contained a greater wealth in salt than what they were paying for it. Somalia had a governmental and economic collapse and rather intriguingly not only did the people continue using the currency (Somalian Shillings), but they established rates for using counterfeit Somalian Shillings and other nations currency as well and continued to act as both the legal and illegal currencies had value, even though it was entirely imaginary. In our own solar system there is an asteroid, 16 Psyche, which is believed to be the most valuable object in the solar system and contains more gold and platinum alone then there is on Earth in totality several times over and is raw valued at 700 Quintillion dollars. Except, perhaps ironically, if it's harvested, it's not. Flooding the market with those commodities shifts the supply/demand curve and in this case if it were introduced all at once would eliminate it's value, even if it doesn't enter the market all at once, the value of gold or platinum (Or any of the material gained from it) would still go down, even just the knowledge that it could be could reduce the value on the market. Which brings me back to the original question, what is wealth to an interplanetary society? If every metal and mineral can be found in abundance, once you have the power and technological level to travel between stars, what becomes valuable to them?
