What if Microsoft did the same thing with FSX? Then no one could use it's full potensial, but everyone will have 100fps, everywhere. For what good?
That's exactly what should have happened. The only real issue in FSX is that they allowed TOO MUCH freedom to the user to destroy the frame rate. This backfired on FSX because users prefer to bash it as "slow", rather than accepting to put sliders down.
Instead they use sliders so the user can change the settings so it would fit the computers prestanda. That would be the best choice for everyone.
The LOD switching distance can't be settable at run time. It's embedded in the MDL, and it would need the object to be recompiled to change it.
The only thing that we might be able to set, is the absolute loading distance of an object, but not the individual LOD distances inside an object, which I believe this is what your are asking for.
At JFK (and KORD as well), SOME objects are loaded independently, with their own absolute range, and this we can easily tweak, even in real time. But others are not independent object, but rather embedded LOD levels, and these we can't control in real time and let the user customize it.