Well, you actually begin with a good example of another outlandish claim. They are right? I don’t suppose you can back that up? If not, that’s just an unbacked claim. Outlandish, of course, is subjective, but I’d say it sure is just that.
The one you claim is outlandish, is, indeed, outlandish. I agree with your point that this is what the ruling class would do, if we remove this thought experiment from any context and real-life bounds. They 100% would. If they knew they’d get away with it.
I don’t believe they would, in reality, though, get away with it.
So while that point is logical in a detached sense, it still is as outlandish as everything else.
Edit: What’s up with this .ee instance by the way? Has anyone else noticed that a lot of commenters and comments like this happen to be from there? Contrarians, completely weird takes, oddly common “I’m a leftist, BUT…” comments, and a lot of third party voters and enthusiasts. I’ve noted it earlier but this finally made it hit. Does anyone know some context that they’d have time and energy to share?
This is funnily something actually taught at (at least some) Russian troll farms. Confuse the conversations and revert to thin, barely applicable accusations of logical fallacies or other kinds of “rules” of supposedly civil discussion. But this certain sense of “civil discussion” where some misguided sense of self-perceived (and sadly, almost always unfounded) logical superiority prompts one to be as confusing as this comment here, claiming to have a point, which the other supposedly does not, while elevating the fact that they themselves already claimed not to have found a source for their outlandish and confusing prior claim, to be some sort of bonus point to “win” the argument with. All this, without a hint of self-consciousness or admittance that their very original comment was equally or more pointless, if this is how points would be decided according to their view. And the importance put in virtual brownie points that prompts them to go to the trouble of amending their initial, ill-received comment to with an edit explicitly stating that they laugh at the downvoters, while being obviously hurt and unnecessarily heavily affected by it…
It’s so weirdly confusing and recognizable that this must be a cultural thing. A long time ago I knew some academics/students from Russia, and they all seemed similarly interested in some logical “winning” even in just normal discussions, in this certain way that is just uncanny. Self-importance and the persistence with misguided logical superiority despite having clearly themselves made an oopsie in the first place, seems to be something of a cultural difference in this specific flavor.
Of course this is done everywhere, the whole self-importance and all (as demonstrated by yours truly!), but not in this one specific uncanny way.