I am not a conspiracy theorist

I am an incentives, narratives and consequences analyst

Jan 26, 2026

As you probably know, the expression ‘conspiracy theory’ did not come into widespread use until the 1960s, or more specifically, until some questions about the investigation of the Kennedy assassination emerged. Why? Because the official explanation was rather fishy. The derogatory term was designed to discredit anyone questioning the obvious problems with the official narratives. ‘Conspiracy theory’ has a hint of insanity, a suggestion that not accepting official explanations is not only unreasonable but unhinged. No person who wants to be taken seriously should ever entertain them, and the arguments of those who do, can and should be dismissed without consideration.

In my post Conspiracy theory I was making the point that the essence of conspiracy theories is the formulation of rational possibilities. The question is not whether they are true, but whether they are believable or conceivable.

When you are accused of being a conspiracy theorist, the message is:
“If you cannot prove me wrong, you MUST accept what I say as the truth.”

Truth is in the mind of the beholder. Especially if we know that it is a lie.
As George Constanza (of Seinfeld) said to Jerry at some point:
“It is not a lie, if you believe it.”
We could quote Goebbels here as well:
“If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”

The essence of faith is compliance. Being a conspiracy theorist means choosing the discomfort of doubt over the expected compliance with obvious lies. It means substituting lies with speculations about the possible, but uncertain truths. Living with doubts and uncertainty makes most people uncomfortable.
I feel being in a minority with having no problems with it.

When it comes to religion, I am an apatheist, meaning that I choose not to burden myself with the question of God’s existence. I feel the same way about conspiracy theories. I just don’t entertain them. I have my beliefs, but I do not need confirmation when I do know, that I cannot possibly know with certainty. That does NOT have to mean that I accept narratives and explanations uncritically.

I believe that Hillary Clinton did have a hand in the death of dozens of people, because assuming otherwise would be a statistical impossibility.
I also believe that we do NOT have a reasonable explanation for the collapse of building 7 on 9/11. I have quite a few more, but that is where I stop. Considering the cost of the effort and its utter futility, I choose not to go further. I don’t need to know, and I don’t feel the need to convince anybody about the ‘correctness’ of my beliefs.
And yes, I also do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the main character behind the Kennedy assassination.

I cannot remember which AI LLM gave me the following summary:

“In an age where conspiracy theories are in vogue, the task of untangling what drives collective belief has never been more urgent—or more intriguing. Today’s cultural landscape is awash with alternative explanations and shadowy suppositions, but beneath the surface lies a tapestry of incentives and motivations that shape the stories we tell and the truths we choose to accept. By examining the underlying structures of consequence and narrative, one can better understand not only how these theories capture imaginations, but also what their popularity reveals about society itself.”

It is a perfect illustration of the bland, postmodernist narrative (a.k.a.: blabber): conspiracy theories are a societal disease of distrust in authority.
I’m with George Carlin, applying Occam’s razor:

Conspiracy theories are just too complicated. Understanding incentives and motivations; looking at and analyzing results makes a lot more sense. You do not need to know the details as long as you understand the corruptive influences.
Let me illustrate with a few examples:

Big Pharma+

Pharmaceutical companies are corporations driven by the profit motive. That much should be obvious. How can they make profit?
Well, they could make exceptional products, but for a business that makes what is essentially a knowledge product, that is not a sustainable business model.
What they need are captive consumers, that are dependent on their product, market protection, compelled consumption, addiction or medical dependence, monopoly power, protection from competition, suppression of criticism of their products, immunity from criminal prosecution, etc.
Add to it the capture of the profession handling and administering their product, capture of the regulators, capture of the reviewers and the advertising platforms while creating a framework for censorship and suppression of criticism, and they have it made.
Who needs a conspiracy when you can have all that? They are, in fact, in control of everything related to our health. Medical education and licensing, medical research and regulation, scientific publications; vaccination schedules and medical recommendations.

They are often accused of nefarious actions, gros negligence and cover-ups. Even conspiracies, but the real harm is all done completely legally.
Richard Sackler, whose company, Pardue Pharma is responsible for 800,000 deaths, is still a billionaire who did not spend a day in jail. Sackler could be a poster boy for the industry.
The health of America is going down, not up.
The interest of big pharma is not aligned with ours. They make money if we are sick, they lose money when we are healthy. Are they acting with nefarious intent? Is it a conspiracy? Absolutely not. I chose to believe that they believe their own BS, the official narrative that they are heroic scientists labouring tirelessly for our benefit. Drugs are expensive because research is very costly. Extensive and expensive double-blind studies are necessary to protect us. Except, of course, in the case of an emergency, where all caution can be thrown away and doubts about the net benefit can be cast aside.
The negative consequences of our overall decline in health and life expectancy are happening despite their best efforts, not because the system is corrupt to the core.

The greatest success of the pharmaceutical industry is their ability to sell this narrative to most people. The compliant ones.

Big agrobiz + Big food

What makes the discussion of these two businesses so difficult is that our connection to them is even more visceral than our emotional connection to health.
But they are just as – if not even more - corrupt than the health and pharma industries.
In our minds we still have a classic image of the small farmer working tirelessly to pry some food out the ground. The dairy farmer getting up early in the morning to milk his cows and collect the eggs from the chickens. We still see all of it through a lens of nostalgies. The market today is concentrated. You can find some details here.
The power-concentration is truly astonishing. A few corporations control 50% of global food production, processing, machinery and inputs like seeds and fertilizers.
50%+ of all seeds used globally are GMO.
Just consider this business model for a second: Monsanto developed a vegetation killer, then genetically engineered seed with the antidote to create a captive market.
But it is not a conspiracy. It is a perverted extortion racket.

And as if this was not enough, they are producing all this with considerable help of our tax dollars. 60% of all crop insurance in the US is covered by the Federal government. The estimated total is $30 billion per year. (more details here)

$4-6 billion is spent on ‘conservation,’ meaning money given to farmers to produce in a certain way or not at all.

It would be insane to think that such concentration will not produce perverse incentives. These businesses have their interests served by the most powerful political lobbies, making it sure that the money will keep flowing their way. Is this a conspiracy? Of course it is not, it is just the American way to do business. Their most important interest is income security. Then comes producing highest possible volume per acre, environment and human health be damned.
When it comes to food production, the incentive is to make us want more. There is a science to manipulating our biological wants. Our most basic taste receptors are sweet and salty. We are biologically programmed to seek it and to enjoy it, because in our evolutionary history they were not readily available. Consuming them in large quantities have adverse health effects. They know that, yet they are still doing it. Is this a conspiracy? Not really. But doing it on our dime is. Sort of. We are the ones who vote for the politicians they buy for us with the money they make on us.

Big powers & tiny little Israel

I wrote several posts about Israel. My position is clear. Killing people is bad, no matter who does it. We should hold everybody to the same standards. Israel is a conflict zone ever since it was established as a modern state. It seems unresolvable, until you consider the reasons why. Both sides are financed heavily to keep the conflict going. Antisemitism is an emotional outlet for righteous virtue signaling. The Jews want continuous protection from America that would be more difficult to maintain if they made up with the Arabs.

The Arab world wants the conflict going to divert attention from their own miserable performance. America wants to keep a foothold in the Middle-East and its own Jews happy. On October 8^th, 2023, when I heard the news about the Hamas incursion into Israel, my first thought was: how very convenient!

By the beginning of October, it was clear that the Ukrainian counteroffensive that was much touted by the Biden administration stalled completely. A diversion was needed.
Was it Hamas opportunism or an Israeli false-flag operation? Neither is unimaginable and can be explained by conflicting drivers and motivations.

We tend to project moral intent into every human endeavor, when we should look at interests and motivations. We shouldn’t care what the intent is behind a harmful action; what we should look for is the corrupting effects of self-interest.
We can discuss how to do that some other time.

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Writer’s notes:

I decided to try this as a feature, commenting on the writing process.
This one took a long time as I was taking a deep look into the examples I used.
I was honestly shocked. The situation is ten times worse than I originally thought.
The level of political corruption is scary. Follow the links and watch the videos.