As stated by @Havenstone on the XOR WIP thread:
That’s what some people throughout the empire believe - a reasonable interpretation of the Theurges’ insistence that without the rite of sacrifice, blood has no power. They’re mistaken, however.
There really needs to be a way to quote locked threads. I already miss the old XOR WIP thread 
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@Havenstone also stated:
The element of the oil economy that I’m most interested in is the profound difficulty of changing it to something that doesn’t do the same damage; and that has to apply to the Karagond blood economy, too. If it could be solved as simply as Hegemony-wide blood drives, the only reason for the current system to persist would be pure demonic malice, which would make for a much less interesting rebellion. (It may be worth repeating again what I’ve said a couple times upthread: the theory that it’s pain/torture/terror of the victim which gives aetherial blood its power is wrong. That would take the metaphor in a direction which I think is less true to the real world challenges of e.g. the slave economy or the oil economy.)