Why do you believe such a thing exists in the U.S.?
I personally find the arguments for mutually assured destruction very plausible.
Whether it's between countries or between factions within a country with WMDs, a real fighting war will practically wipe out the citizenry, including the vast majority of farmers and certainly everyone living in cities.
Because it exists for every civilization and essentially every system. The U.S. is not inherently exceptional in this regard.
And, yes, MAD is plausible and also a strong deterrent. But a central crux of the theory is that the system is inhabited by rational agents. Humans can even be modeled as rational agents most of the time, but I don't believe they adhere to this model all of the time. Behavioral psychology seems to bear this out.
How does that follow? Clearly the presence of WMDs changed the game.
I also don't see how rationality, or it's absence, relates to this point?
You are using the current situation of a farmer (who has access to the internet and other regulated monopolies) as evidence for the case against those very services. If you remove that level of access, I don't think you have the point you think you do.
It's like pointing to someone who gets government assistance and saying "See? There isn't enough quality of life differential to warrant them getting assistance." The very fact that they receive assistance is exactly why that level of discrepancy is lower.
If you're saying that its possible that greater inequality can be tolerated, it's missing the point. I'm not stating a claim about an absolute level; I'm saying society should be aware that a tipping point exists. The same is said for taxation; people can point to past eras where people paid a higher effective tax rate and claim that as evidence that the current level should be raised. That doesn't negate the point that there is some rate that will make society relatively unstable.