[stetrain]

Corruption, as in individuals working in their own interest in a way that best provides them power and/or lines their pockets, is different than a grand conspiracy that a large percentage of that state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public.

The government is not "an entity", it is layers and levels of elected and unelected officials working towards their own personal goals.

The idea that many of them do things that they shouldn't for personal gain is fairly obvious.

Ideas that huge numbers of them are working together in secret across both public and private sector to execute a singular master plan, fake a moon landing, mess with the population via brain wave broadcasts, spread chemtrails via commercial aircraft, etc. with zero hard evidence are on an entirely different level.

[pessimizer]

> a grand conspiracy that a large percentage of that state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public.

But this is a straw man. Do you know any conspiracy theorists that believe that a large percentage of the state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public, or is that just the easiest thing to discount? The conspiracy theories I hear about are about small groups of people that "control things from behind the scenes."

> The government is not "an entity", it is layers and levels of elected and unelected officials working towards their own personal goals.

This is a false dichotomy. The non-existence of government as an entity is a conspiracy theory so wild that very few people believe it. It's like saying Apple doesn't exist, just some people who happen to be sitting at desks near each other that conspiracy theorists decided to make a big deal about.

[stetrain]

> But this is a straw man. Do you know any conspiracy theorists that believe that a large percentage of the state is working together on a secret project that they have guarded from the public, or is that just the easiest thing to discount?

The moon landing conspiracy theory is a good example. It would involve hundreds of thousands of people across public and private sector all keeping such a secret. It would even involve the governments of other countries (namely Russia, or Australia who received and relayed many of the lunar broadcasts on the US's behalf) who had their own tracking and radio equipment and could have at least attempted to discredit the mission, but did not.

Chemtrails is a common conspiracy theory as well that again would require cooperation and secret keeping among thousands across both public and private sectors.

Part of my point is that a small number of people keeping a secret for a short time is plausible, but as the number of people and length of time scale up it becomes less plausible due to human nature.

In countries with extreme state corruption, secret police, rigged elections, people being "disappeared", etc. those things are not secrets, and the problem is not a lack of evidence of the corruption.

The citizens know that the secret police exist and that you are at risk of being detained by the secret police for publicly stating forbidden positions. The citizens know the autocrat will always win each election. They are just powerless to change it.