The Ferengi could have worked as a galactic East India Company: a company not beholden to a nation, with territory, colonies, subjects, mercenaries and armies all on its own. An entity that operates as an empire without technically being a nation or state, beholden only to profit and expansion of trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company
Even now, capitalists don't care about long-term profits anymore. It's all about the next quarter.
Maximise short-term gains at all costs.
"The only trouble with capitalism is capitalists; they’re too damn greedy." - Herbert Hoover
Not to get too deep in political issues, as those get nasty, but capitalists are not the same as economists. Economics starkly defines the short term and long term of the economy and marketplace. Both terms are not set time periods and can vary, but in essence, in the short term, there are limited variables and are things that are not variable. In the long term,
everything is variable, and that dynamism of the economy and market is what allows for growth, expansion, and profitability -- in short, success. The problem throughout business history has been looking at the short term, and saying "we can't do this" or "we have to do this", while ignoring the long term (which is a real economic factor; this is not just slang) and the fact that they can do something or do not have to do something. Or that whatever the decision is will have negative consequences because they are being short sighted rather than doing what needs to be done or what can only be done in the short term given what is not variable, while planning out for the long term (as everything is variable in the long term).
That being said, the Ferengi are not bad business people. They have ulterior motives in everything, and that motive is making money. But they will also do good things because of that ulterior motive. It is the same with any real world business. They will do what is economically logical. That being said, they do themselves become short sighted because they are so darned greedy. Oddly enough, "evil" Ferengi may actually be bad business people. Capitalism does not work under evil. Tyranny leads to market stagnation, alienating consumers, limiting expansion, etc. For example, slavery is actually very short sighted economically. In the short term, you have free labor. But you have to support that labor, feed it and cloth it to own it. If you do not, it dies or is weak and cannot work. You are removing consumers from the marketplace. You are stagnating labor, which will undermine market dynamism. And you create an elitist class and lock the economy and business environment into something of a limited dynastic rule of those elites, which undermines the mobility, dynamism, and therefore growth of the economy. On the other hand, evil Ferengi have a galaxy at their disposal. They can conquer, abuse, work to death, and drain the life force from a planet which is converted into profit. And when it is drained, leave it behind to do the same to any countless number of planets. And as an ancillary, they have trade partners and subjects paying them tribute and all the rest. But even that is short sighted, because they would earn more money in the long term simply doing good business with free people. Those people, through individual decision and freedom, make their own way and their own money, support themselves, and so forth, and decide to give some of that economic power to the Ferengi in the representative form of money. This is why the real Ferengi never had slavery, and didn't conquer worlds.
It was DS9 that retconned them as these basically ineffectual characters that have no danger potential. (Even then, Quark was much darker and less cuddly in the DS9 pilot.) No, it's a myth that TNG quickly decided that the Ferengi were not the new big bad. They remained powerful enemies right the way into season 7.