alt Hacker NewsI think the best analogy for this are scams. Once a scammer finds a mark they'll pay, there's a desire to soak them for as much as they'll bear.
EVs are not a scam per-se, but they also don't add any value. 80% of the world already figured that out, do by definition if you are asking you are in the bottom 20%.
Now I get you were in the process of migration, but that's an edge case. In a normal case if you go around asking to buy a wildcard EV, you basically have a sign saying "fleece me".
So yeah, there's still a market for people wanting to throw money at CAs, even in these comments you'll see some. And management types are especially prone to "sounds expensive, must be good" logic when spending other people's money.
I think you've left out the ecosystem of semi-scam, without that the decisions look less logical.. If you go and add a private rootCA to all your servers there are risks. You can convince yourself the risks are covered, you can convince a highly qualified security analyst. Can you convince a business intern with a checklist hired by a certification firm that underbid the one with specialists? 30K to engage with no one on the topic starts to look ideal.