Only a whale would waste that much money on a regular basis (as you said), not a shrimp.
Any way to raise fees that is not crazy expensive is being tested by large miners.
The ½ should bring about a lot of weird bizarre money moves.
But if I am foundry grabbing ⅓ of the blocks raising fees is in my interest.
https://miningpoolstats.stream/bitcoin
It's not like Foundry has 90% of the hashrate to solve almost every block...
If your hypothesis is correct, this gives some ammo to BTC critics to declare it "centralized".
the spend done to raise fees would need to be 15% of what the fees run.
Ie spend .2 btc on fees. your pool mine ⅓ the blocks so your actual spend is not .2 it is .133
So what does the cost of .133 raise the fees by for each block . If they can move block fees from .1 to .5
and they hit ⅓ of those blocks they get .167 for spending .133