The Conspiracy is Greed
(repost from Substack: originally posted July 24, 2025)
There is an omnipresent conspiracy in our midst. Other than Epstein.
Big tech companies are covering up their disenfranchisement of Human value before our eyes. It’s hidden in plain sight. For those paying close attention: it feels existential and apocalyptic. For those not, it probably feels like just another way that corporations suckle off the teat of labor, milking humans for what they’re worth - and in return, providing as little compensation as possible.
Yet, what if these two conspiracies are intertwined. What if they feed the same monster? In the case of Epstein, there are people in power who try to subdue the cultural potency of Epstein’s crimes by manipulating the public’s perspective. Their tricks are something out of magicians guide to misdirection. Trump shares a fake AI generated video of Obama getting arrested in order to get people to look in any other direction than the most obvious one. It’s not exactly the stuff of genius.
The same can’t be said for the intelligent wrongdoing of AI corporations. These companies allow us to proliferate AI slop. Slop can be cute or fun: like a corgi capably playing a drum-set. Or slop can be insidious and grotesque - like a deepfake of an underaged girl engaging in involuntary sex acts. Either way, their purpose is distraction. They avert our eyes from the true conspiracy: The Tech Barons are robbing ordinary people of their time and attention. The most insulting aspect is, that they dare to herald themselves as “effective altruists” here to save the world while simultaneously destroying the bedrock of our shared experience.
With much clear cut conspiracy to address, it’s worth questioning why conspiracies like QAnon and Jefferey Epstein (dubbed by David French “the thinking man’s QAnon”), capture the public so completely, while the most nefarious players are given carte blanche as we swipe and scroll.
There’s a pleasing ease which washes over when people rush to the most extreme version of a conspiracy. While there is much to legitimately question in the case of Epstein, it is almost more useful to a radical movement when there is little to no evidentiary support (as in the case of QAnon). The concept is reminiscent of falling in love with the idea of a person, while barely knowing them at all. It allows the mind to paint this individual in all your favorite colors. They fill the gaps in your life. They’re perfect: they are every question answered. Every pain, healed. So long as you never get to know them, they hold the key to your salvation.
QAnon, while dark and depraved in content, provides the same sort of religious perfection to it’s disciples. Q says there is an easy explanation (and enemy) for all the sins of the world. It is a cabal of conniving elites who torture and kill children in satanic rites. This is the source of evil. In following Q, you can focus your energy on a unifying concept meant to rid the world of terror.
In a 2020 interview on ORF, Jacob Chansley - “the QAnon Shaman” - stated that "in order to beat this evil occultic force you need a light occultic force ... [you need] a force that is of the side of God, of love ... almost like on the side of the angels ... as opposed to the demons." But, in placing the cause in terms of religious fervor - you place this one ideology above all worthy goals. The terror of banal evil goes unchecked. That terror is ordinary greed.
Have we ever reckoned with the motives of of banks which led to the 08 crisis? Have we dealt with our nation profiting off, as Eisenhower dubbed it, “the military-industrial complex?” Have we boycotted companies like Shein and Temu who regularly commit unlawful abuses against their employees? How about one of the most egregious conspiracies of all: The tax code.
The fact that property taxes fund education - leading to massive inequality from the very start of life - is rooted in historical sin. It’s not shadow forces which harm millions of children (in a lifelong multitude of ways) through the denial of equal education. It’s policy. But these sorts of evils, which abound, do not have a glorious road to change. There are no harbingers of the storm and satan to electrify the masses. Addressing these substantive policy failures allows for a path to justice, but it is a deliberate and slow one. Unlike with QAnon, we do not need to read the signs in hands gestures and pizza joints to expose the tax code’s vices; it is fact. But, also unlike QAnon, fact must be purposefully reckoned with.
Property taxes funding education is another means of eradicating any opportunities for impoverished and minority people. If you redline these groups into decrepit districts, and base their schooling funds off property taxes, and then make food stamps unable to afford nutritious groceries - resulting in greater healthcare costs - you have successfully created a poverty trap: a conspiracy of elite gain at the expense of the poor.
This conspiracy is ripe for uncovering - for exposing. But it is not sexy. It is not a group of Democratic officials and Hollywood actors drinking children’s blood to stay looking young. And it’s not simple, you can’t just take down a few elites and then the righteous will of good unfurls before our eyes. Dealing with these real issues would require engaging in purposeful discourse.
Dialogue with upper middle class people can affect change in those who don’t immediately recognize how their efforts, to gain an extra bit of wealth, reinforce the poverty trap. They don’t do this because they are inherently any more selfish than a working class person. This class is not some different species to be scorned. It’s their loyalties that became insulated. Their hearts, on the other hand, are still accessible.
Taxes from high income districts, could be repurposed for greater equality. However, that would cause people to have to confront the narrative of their personal success with those who never had a shot at it. In that confrontation, there should be no place for righteous indignation and clickbait headlines. If the upper middle class could tackle these questions and assert their kinship in a cause of greater justice, then it would open up a partnership with working class and poor Americans that could take on the highest earners who commit the most tax evasion.
But, that’s a lot of work. It’s not an easy solve. Whereas conspiracies are like superhero movies: they give us a villain to focus our anger at. But, maybe the villain is not a face. Maybe it’s an idea. What happens when the villain is greed? What if greed is the root of conspiracy? What if Greed is the monster?
Sexual and Socioeconomic greed led Epstein to take advantage of over 1000 victims for his own personal gain. Greed led OpenAI to cheat thousands of artists out of their fair share so it could achieve market dominance. Our greed leads us to distract ourselves and isolate others as we further plummet into the attention economy. Greed pulls us from our common purpose.
The conspiracy - the one that is killing our democracy and planet is not buried at the bottom of the Epstein files. It is plain sight. It is in the conduct of the companies we we patronize with our time, attention, and data. Justice should be had for the many victims of Epstein and it is a worthwhile cause to ask for more answers. So yell, and call your representatives. But don’t stop there. If you are fed up with injustice, against children from the start of their lives, there are plenty of conspiracies hidden in policy which offer an outlet for your rage to foment into action.
A day will come soon when tech corporations will encourage a sea of deepfakes that finalize our complete distortion of reality into distinctive markets of truth. The “invisible hand” will will it. But we have a hand in the future too. We must fight for our humanity, even when it is laborious. Do not turn your back on your fellow man because it offers an instant gratification only tiktok used to. Fight back against the companies that profit off our rage - not the people who are held hostage to it.
We must turn that rage into collective power. Rage against the corporate machine.
