But when you scale things up - at massive quantities - you have to account for the illegal/immoral/unethical behaviour scaling up as well. It may be completely inconceivable that criminal behaviour occurs in circles of power - but when you are dealing with people who are involved in the lives of millions, upon millions - literally tens of millions of humans, or even hundreds of millions - criminality at scale starts to become a thing.
And yes, a group of a few thousand no-good types can hide their activities in the realm of humans-at-scale. This has been proven time and again throughout history, and anyone who thinks 'its impossible for people to be that well organized' are fooling themselves.
Humans are incredibly good at organizing themselves to get things done - nefarious or otherwise - and anyone thinking otherwise is just manifesting a form of personal anti-social neurosis. If its unreal to you that conspiracies could form at scale, you need to read more history and pay attention to how so many of our cultures and societies throughout the world have been constructed. Heck, even the American state began as a conspiracy that nobody could believe would result in anything much ..
On one hand, most everyone seems to get it that bad behavior and corruption is rife, but on the other hand any specifics ideas will generally be dismissed as conspiracy theories. I sometimes wonder if the widespread strong beliefs that "everything's a conspiracy theory unless it's been reported on" is completely natural, or if it has been partially socially engineered.
This is a good podcast to listen to for an example:
> Common Sense 276 β Past Transgressions
> https://podtail.com/en/podcast/common-sense-with-dan-carlin/...
> Description: Imagine celebrities from the 1960s and 1970s who were involved in sexual conduct with minors in their heyday being called to account for it today. Itβs currently happening in Great Britain. Dan has some thoughts.
How many incredibly famous rock stars from the past were sleeping with underage groupies in plain sight of hundreds of people? And what have we heard, beyond a few rumors?
Has no one here witnessed criminal behavior worthy of prison sentences in the workplace? I certainly have, and my career has been nothing special, at all. People underestimate how easy it is to cover things up when money (people's jobs) are on the line. And if that looks to be failing, there's always cold hard cash or other forms of persuasion, and if the stakes are high enough, "suicide" (which will inevitably be classified as a conspiracy theory).
For more examples of broad daylight corruption that never makes the news, I highly recommend listening to the Common Sense podcast, and even sticking one's nose into /r/conspiracy now and then, for those who are able to think unemotionally about such things of course.