Published in the Laissez Faire Electronic Times, Feburary 3, 2003
The Pros and Cons of Conspiracy Theories
by
Pierre Lemieux
If a conspiracy is "a secret plan on the part of a group to influence events partly by covert action"[1], we have to realize that conspiracies do occur. Watergate was a conspiracy. Most people believe that 9/11 was the result of an al-Qaeda conspiracy. There was either a conspiracy to organize the Holocaust, or else there has been a conspiracy to make it look real: one cannot logically escape the conclusion that, one way or another, there was a conspiracy. (Each time I write something like this, people warn me that I should take lot of care not to look like a "revisionist nutball." Well, no, I am not a revisionist. In my In Defense of Hate Literature,[2] I explain why I believe the Holocaust occurred for the same type of reasons that I believe the earth is not flat.)
But there is more to this than the many examples of actual conspiracies that we can find. The fact is that small conspiracies occur within any spontaneous order. Adam Smith gave an example related to the free market: "People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices."[3] Quite interestingly, he added: "It is impossible indeed to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice."[4] Well, this is what antitrust laws now do, pointing to a conspiracy of politicians against liberty and justice.
Indeed, conspiracies are more prevalent in the political world, because the state is a "particular organization" in the Hayekian sense, as opposed to the spontaneous order of society, and because conspiracies are the bread and butter of organizational behavior. Note however that some spontaneous order is at play in any conspiracy, and especially in large, complex conspiracies: results of individual actions among conspirators produce unintended results which may go against the goals agreed on by the conspirators. Many unintended effects of state intervention, i.e., of conspiracies among statocrats, are thus explainable in terms of spontaneous order.
It is fashionable to rebut any argument against state conspiracies by saying that "it's just conspiracy theory." One reason why conspiracy theories are so discredited in intellectual circles may have to do with ideological factors. Philosopher Steve Clarke writes: "No doubt history plays its part in explaining the hostility of intellectuals towards conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorising has long been favoured by Populists, who are almost invariably anti-elitist, and therefore generally anti-intellectual as well. Some intellectuals may dismiss conspiracy theories simply on the basis of guilt by association with anti-intellectual Populism."[5] Of course, this is not the whole story, and we still need to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable conspiracy conjectures. Perhaps black helicopters do exist. We want to know which are the real and which are the imaginary conspiracies, to distinguish between conspiracy hypotheses that merit further investigation and those that probably don't. Which conspiracy conjectures are true, and which one are false?
Let's take pause. The problem with conspiracy theories is not that conspiracies do not exist. There is some conspiracy in any spontaneous-order explanation, and some spontaneous order in any conspiracy. I suggest that the main problems with conspiracy theorizing arise from its methodological flaws and from its neglect of cost and choice considerations on the part of conspirators.
First, the methodological issue. According to Ockam's razor, the simpler explanation should win the day. Explaining something by a conspiracy is a bit too easy, as you can tailor the explanation to fit the facts, however complex the explanation becomes. Other things being equal, the explanation that Elvis Presley died from a heart condition is simpler than the explanation that he wanted to be thought dead and that his coffin contained a wax dummy prevented from melting by an air conditioning system. Organizing a conspiracy to fake Elvis Presley's death would have been a relatively simple matter, compared to complex social or political conspiracies.
The methodological argument against social explanations in terms of conspiracies is well explained by Robert Nozick, who argues that invisible-hand explanations, i.e., explanations in terms of spontaneous order interactions, are better because what is to be explained is not obviously planted in the premises of the explanatory theory.[6]
It is easy to show that conspiracy theorizing is not sufficient to understand the world. Consider the following paradox: there is a conspiracy in having us believe that the world is ruled by conspiracies.[7] In other words, if conspiracy theories explain the world, they don't. Meta-conspiracies defuse any conspiracy explanation.
At any rate, between two conspiracies, one should privilege the more simple one.
Secondly, consider the cost and choice circumstances of conspirators. Conspiracy explanations are less convincing the longer the time span of the conspiracy, the higher the number of conspirators involved, and the higher the costs to them of engaging in, and covering, the conspiracy. That a few hundred Illuminati[8] would, over a span of two centuries, have successfully conspired to rule the world strains the imagination – even without bringing Lucifer in. As one conspiracy theorist puts it:
"The heart of the Illuminati's power is the banking and oil cartels, (Rothschild, Rockefeller) but it includes many interlocking cartels like media, pharmaceuticals, defence, illegal drugs and prostitution. It operates through the world's intelligence agencies, and groups like the Council on Foreign relations, which grooms all US leaders. Esoterically, the Illuminati is a secret society within another secret society, the Freemasons who are dedicated to sacrificing mankind to Lucifer."[9]It is not unconceivable that the BATF (or part of it) conspired to organize the Oklahoma City bombing, but the risks and expected costs (the death penalty) to the individuals involved make it unlikely. Game theory tells us that it is in the interest of each conspirator to defect at the slightest sign of the conspiracy being discovered. And the larger the number of conspirators, the higher the temptation to defect. It is thus highly unlikely that 9/11 was the result of a conspiracy by the U.S. government or by "the Jews" – even if the terrorist attacks certainly furthered the agenda of many statocrats and allowed the state to assume new vast powers. To have a good conspiracy, motives are not enough: the economics of it – i.e., the participants' incentives and coordination – must work.
Now, here is a problem. Why would we accept that 9/11 was an al-Qaeda conspiracy, but doubt that is the result of a conspiracy by the U.S. government? Applying the criteria developed above leads one to prefer the first conspiracy explanation to the second. First, the al-Qaeda conspiracy is a simpler explanation. Second, American bureaucrats and politicians have more to lose from this kind of conspiracy than Muslim fanatics who, after all, will be rewarded with 72 women (scantily clad, I assume) in the afterworld; moreover the probability that the conspiracy will be uncovered before reaching its goal is greater if the conspirators live in DC than in Afghanistan.
Conspiracies do exist, but they don't explain everything. Common law criminals and international terrorists do conspire to commit crimes. Our own statocrats conspire every day to increase their power and undermine our liberties, even if (fortunately) they are not very efficient and won't take much personal risk. Seeking a conspiracy explanation for all events ignores spontaneous social orders. Grand conspiracies strain credulity more than small ones. But we are mistaken if we close our eyes to small conspiracies in the greater scheme of things.
[1] C. Pigden, "Popper Revisited, or What is Wrong With Conspiracy Theories?", Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 25 (1995), pp. 3-34.
[2] Pierre Lemieux, In Defense of Hate Literature (Sort Of) (Political Notes No. 137, London: Libertarian Alliance, 1997; reproduced at http://www.pierrelemieux.org/artspe.html).
[3] Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book 1, Chapter X; available at http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/SmWNContents.html (visited January 14, 2003).
[4] Smith adds: "But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies, much less to render them necessary."
[5] Steve Clarke, "Conspiracies Theories and Conspiracy Theorising," Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 32, no. 2 (June 2002), pp. 131-150.
[6] Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
[7] Indeed, look at the number of conspiracy websites – for example at http://www.topsitelists.com/bestsites/conspire/topsites.html (visited January 14, 2003).
[8] See the Illuminati Conspiracy Archive at http://www.conspiracyarchive.com (visited January 14, 2003).
[9] Henry Makow, "The Zionist Roots of the 'War on Terror'," at http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/Makow_Zionism_Terrorism.htm (visited January 14, 2003).