[feoren]

There's a common mental exercise I see where smart people will engage in armchair economics to explain what "must have" happened in some situation, or the way the word must work. It all sounds very convincing, but the problem is that there are dozens of other equally convincing macroeconomic explanations. Somehow the ones people tend to pick happen to excuse every rich person from any accountability and foster a "greed is good" outlook, even though the other equally good explanations (left unsaid) would imply the opposite.

You shrug off the FTC's evidence here, and put the word "conspiracy" in scare quotes to discredit it. But the FTC claims "Sheffield sought to align oil production across the Permian Basin in West Texas and New Mexico with OPEC+." and "Sheffield, for example, exchanged hundreds of text messages with OPEC representatives and officials discussing crude oil market dynamics, pricing and output." It feels to me like you're disregarding any actual facts and evidence in this case for your favorite macroeconomic explanation instead.

[Teever]

I think what you're witnessing is a defense mechanism that comes about as a response to cognitive dissonance that is related to their deeply held personal beliefs about how the world works and their role in those workings.

To admit such a level of failure of the global system that they identify so strongly with is like admitting a personal weakness to some people. so they reject that possiblility any way they can.