Thank you for the re-orientation...

> this is an exaggeration for fictional purposes

To me what's horrifying is that this is not exaggeration. The language and thinking are perfectly in line with business considerations today. It's perfectly fair today e.g., for Amazon to increase efficiency within the bounds of the law, because it's for the government to decide the bounds of coercion or abuse. Policy makers and business people operate at a scale that defies sympathy, and both have learned to prefer power over sentiment: you can force choices on voters and consumers, and get more enduring results for your stakeholders, even when you increase unhappiness. That's the mirror on reality that fiction permits.