a tolerance curve with no floor
The goal was to confirm with statistical assurance the Subject’s desire for viewing and reviewing as incapable of satiation. There could be no index of diminishing satisfaction as in the econometrics of normal U.S.A. commodities. For the samizdat Entertainment’s allure to be macro-politically lethal, the ninth digit of extremities had to come off as quickly and willingly as the second.
Context
The book's most explicit formalization of addiction's economics, built as a lab protocol: price each further dose at one of the subject's own fingers and chart whether the willingness to pay ever declines. The lethal case is the case where it doesn't — no diminishing satisfaction, the ninth finger surrendered as fast as the second. That flat insatiable curve, no bottom and no satiety, is the desire the whole theme has been anatomizing, drawn here on graph paper.