Reading this bit by Cunning Realist re: the economy & the popularity of conspiracy theorists, I realized something that should be injected into the current debate somehow: the proper reverse of conspiracy — the idea that a relatively small group runs everything and is responsible for bad outcomes — is not normal thought, but elite worship, the idea that a small group is responsible for all the good outcomes.  Consider the treatment of the Clinton years for example, and how when the economy was seen as running smoothly (which we now know was based on false growth, bubbles the lesson of which we completely ignored when they popped, insisting on inflating more) this was credited to a group that generally included Bill himself & a couple of his advisers, Alan Greenspan, and the CEOs of a few large multinationals.

Obviously powerful people have disproportionate influence.  That doesn’t mean they can move mountains though.  You can only distort so much before the brick-wall limiter marked Reality slams everything back in place.