General Discussion

...we lack a meaningful epistemology of the phenomenon represented by people who use wealth to accrue and use power, and the first-line proxies they employ.

This may represent a small victory for those specifically concerned with the propaganda element of their operations, by the deployment of terms like "conspiracy" and "secret" and "shadowy" and the linking of such terms with concepts that peel away serious attention and valid analysis and discourage scrutiny on a wider level.

There is also an organic level of misdirection embedded in the terminology through various entertainment and storytelling media that use such terms ("conspiracy", etc.) in fictionalized constructs that postulate intentional and covert organizations and cooperation to contain the action into a useful story arc. At its most extreme fictionalization these are the organized and directed constructs of either individual supervillains or organized groups embedded within or acting on behalf of state factions.

Even the treatment of what we know as "organized crime" in the factual world is subject to this misdirective conceptualization and the imputation of much more coherent and broadly-postulated logistical organization than Occam's Razor will support. "Conspiracies" in the specific criminal sense are unquestionably real and unfortunately common, but they are rarely more complex than is needed to accomplish specific ends.

Instead, there is an organic, even ethnographic element to the kind of activity analyzed under the 'big, shadowy conspiracy with tentacles everywhere' construct. Water flows downhill. Backs are scratched, Knowledge of who can (and will) do what is acquired and remembered and used. Those who live within a particular milieu tend to interact, especially when shared interests come into play.

And the milieus themselves interlock and interlink based on the people within them, pursuing their natural interests, looking to contacts who have knowledge of other milieus when they need to expand into new areas. Then passing the useful information about proxies, investors, resources, etc. on in turn as a back scratch or part of yet another scheme involving others within their milieu.

Technology has certainly enabled higher levels of organization and knowledge-sharing that may, in function, appear as carefully planned constructs rather than natural functions that are predicated by the three factors of individuals involved, situational elements, and systemic configurations. Over time, efforts to increase the availability of situational targets by affecting the configuration of systems to enable opportunistic predation may look like masterminds closeted in a luxurious secret lair and planning to take over the world.

But it's more akin to how a river will wear away obstacles as it works out a path from its source to its outflow.

The real discussions need to be focused less on who is having a secret phone call to launder money to complete some specific criminal enterprise and more on how to decouple the connections between money and power. And on how to do so against the opposition of the broad category of powerful actors who have benefited from the vitiation of economic and legal constraints to keep power and money sequestered from each other.

And that must start with a careful, intentional propaganda war that focuses less on Spy vs. Spy conspiracies and streaming melodramas about power and corruption, and more on the realities of building and supporting social, political, and economic constructs that enable broad support for diverse populations, social mobility, participatory decision making, and future-focused incentives. It is unglamorous work. It isn't as exciting as seeing the bad guys and skeeves get their comeuppance. It takes generations and a willingness to make trade-offs of social rewards for personal rewards.

But as long as we can keep people distracted with constructing elaborate internet-based whiteboards with photos and clippings pasted onto them and threads forming an increasingly complicated macrame of the "conspiracy" we have less incentive to focus on structural change.

Sadly,
Bright