flower, I'm not sure what point your making here.
"To hell with the LTMA" is not something I say lightly. As you say, you'll do what you can to try to survive and an extra (say) 200' could make plenty of difference. With radar, their TCAS, my eyes, etc. I'll take my chances and take the extra altitude. And if they were really going to be at 2600' isn't that pretty dangerous anyway, if I've been given 2400'?
On a related point, I've never understood the logic of allowing IFR traffic to go right to the edge of a controlled space (either laterally or vertically) given that you could end up with very few feets separation - can anybody enlighten me?