Exploitation requires a victim capable of suffering, which is why machines cannot replace workers.

Evidence

Yet that’s not quite right. The subjugatory libidinal forces that draw enjoyment from the current cult of work don’t want us to entirely conceal our misery. For what enjoyment is there to be had from exploiting a worker who actually delights in their work? In his sequel to Blade Runner, The Edge of Human, K.W. Jeter provides an insight into the libidinal economics of work and suffering. One of the novel’s characters answers the question of why, in Blade Runner’s future world, the Tyrell Corporation bothered developing replicants (androids constructed so that only experts can distinguish them from humans): … Why should the off-world colonists want troublesome, humanlike slaves rather than nice, efficient machines? It’s simple. Machines don’t suffer. They aren’t capable of it. A machine doesn’t know when it’s being raped. There’s no power relationship between you and a machine. […] For the replicant to suffer, to give its owners that whole master-slave energy, it has to have emotions. […] The replicant’s emotions aren’t a design flaw. The Tyrell Corporation put them there. Because that’s what our customers wanted. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1706

Categorization

• BMF: Resonates obliquely with Blade Runner material in the library’s world — though none of the exact list books are SF; the suffering-slave economics reverses the logic of Atlas in ‘The Reluctant Fundamentalist’? No real cross-domain match to the listed fiction. Suggest adding Jeter’s The Edge of Human to the reading list.
• SHARE: A Blade Runner superfan would love this — that replicants’ emotions were a deliberate feature, installed because masters need slaves who can suffer.
• XREF: Connects to chapter 55’s kept claim that sadistic enjoyment requires victims who can really suffer yet lack full moral status. — connects to: Exploitation requires subordinates capable of suffering, not just of laboring. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1706