[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.