Using government rules selectively to reward friends and punish enemies is a story as old as time.

There's also the chance they really believe this. Look what happened in Cambodia. The communists overthrew the ruling class, then declared all the farms in the country were 'inefficient,' and destroyed them all, with the intention of rebuilding them better. But it turns out rebuilding an entire country's farming infrastructure that had been built over centuries was not that easy. Then everyone fucking starved.

There were smart people who warned about this, and in the end they were blamed for predicting it, as 'sabotuers,' They were all killed.