Huh. It occurs to me that the writers were treating the passage of time as though they were frame rates of film/ video.

I'm not sure there's anything to this but the concept of matter and energy in our observable reality "vibrating" at a certain frequency might have something to do with the episode. Putting this in film terms we would say that the universe runs at 120fps (or more) while the Enterprise, crew, et al, reside/ experience reality at 60fps, and the orifice aliens experience it on the alternating frames also at 60fps. We're seeing two different narratives taking place on alternating frames.

This doesn't explain why the same planet is still there on the alternating frames.

De facto slavery exists for women in Ferengi society, but the fact that no other apparent slave caste exists along with how quickly Ferenginar's patriarchy was restructured, if not quite dismantled, I think one possible barrier to an effective slave industry (certainly chattel slavery) is that there would be no concept of a person or group of people who should not be trying to earn profit, and the power structures that exist would not punish an enslaved person who was able to skim profits from any labor or administrative work they performed, nor would it necessarily reinforce their status as a slave if they were able to buy themselves out of their position.

I think Ferengi probably thinks that a person or business can own another person, but I don't think they can conceive of a person who can't/ or shouldn't own anything. This is like how it's not illegal to attempt to escape prison in some countries - There's a recognition of the desire to be free.

Now, that's all a huge problem when Ferengi develop interstellar travel and encounter full-blown slavers like the Orion Syndicate and other criminal elements, because 1) they'll not only participate in the slave trade for all the reasons you said, but they'll be really good at it, and 2) they won't fully understand the power structures beyond wealth which makes enslavement so egregious.

I wonder: Quark's weapon trading may not have bothered his conscience because of him adopting human ethics, as he feared, but because he was parsing his own ethics with a fuller understanding of the implications of what he was participating in as he was learning more about alien cultures.

Thanks for the clarification

You might still disagree with this, but I guess the main thing I mean by efficiency in the case of biology is that natural systems seem to take the shortest route in response to stimuli. So perhaps there is a difference between optimization and efficiency in the case of the Borg, and I would say that an unintended consequence of their advanced tech is that it would start to behave like an organic system as they adapt to new circumstances.

I think there is a problem the Borg maybe haven't acknowledged which is that they want an organized and optimized system, but progress or evolution means having a system which is good at responding to favorably to current conditions which may or may not exist in the future. Obviously the Borg are trying to also control their environment to be as predictable as possible, but they still encounter the unexpected (species 8472, for example) and have had some HUGE weak spots/ liabilities (Data can put a whole cube to sleep, their ships are subject to easily being infiltrated, etc). The Borg may believe in perfection, but I think they are on a fools errand.

On this note, part of me wonders if some of the Ferengi encountered by the Federation early on weren't already outlaws looking to make profit outside the constraints of Ferengi ethics, such as they are.

Oh definitely. I think everyone writing Ferengi episodes had this in mind.

But at some point in DS9's run, I think someone (probably Ira) realized that the worship of the "free market" was becoming even worse than the fictional and cartoonish economics that they invented for the sole purpose of making fun of capitalism, to the point that they somehow got away with giving Quark, of all characters, the moral high ground when criticizing human history.

I'm sure the writers understood that synth/ AI would conceivably mean more than just Soong-like Androids and would include holograms as well as other advanced programs which possessed sapience or from which sapience could emerge, but it is another weakness in PIC's storytelling that it feels like the show doesn't understand that these entities are similar and would have been included in the ban.

A few lines of dialogue addressing other kinds of AI would have been satisfying in terms continuity, and would have also emphasized how unjust the ban was. Even tech-augmented individuals may have been unfairly impacted (poor Rutherford!), and while the show does show how former Borg are treated poorly, this is strangely not linked to the synth ban in any meaningful way.

Soong Androids and The Borg are used to explore the the concept of technological singularity (or at least early iterations en route).The (real) fear of the convergence of technology and society/ biology is leveraged as a metaphor for prejudice in TNG. PIC continues those threads... but does not connect them. Like, guys, this is a show about Picard and Data - TNG: Descent and Star Trek: First Contact are right there.