I have written before about the logical problems of conspiracy theories, but I want to mention one more. This is the problem of being bad shepherds.

In every world domination conspiracy theory I have heard, those engaged in the conspiracy are endowed with a lot of power, they can shape world events, yet they hunger for more. So, to achieve their ends they seem to always have the dual goals of impoverishing everyone else and seizing ultimate power.

But this is absurd. If they want to rule, wouldn't they want to keep the world rich rather than poor? Sickly cattle are easier to herd than stroing ones, but we keep cattle strong because sickly cattle are less beneficial. In the same way, ruling over a rich planet is more productive than ruling over a poor one. So, why would these people who conspire want to impoverish everyone?

The argument usually is that they want to make everyone poor so they can control the world, but that doesn't make any sense. If they already have the power to make everyone poor when operating behind the scenes, surely they could dominate the world without making it so poor and nonproductive that no one would want to rule it?

Or do those postulating this theory not recall that gold and cash are valueless if there is nothing to buy with them?

Why do I mention this? Because I see similar arguments from non-conspiracy theorists. Especially when talking about oil. These people speak as if speculators and OPEC were doing what they do, not to get wealth, but to simply cause problems.

For example, they say speculators just keep "driving up the price of oil", which makes no sense. If they were to do that, they woudl jus tkeep buiying oil and holding it, but that will make no one rich. It will give them a massive quantity of oil, but to make money they have to sell it, which will drive down the price of oil, perhaps more than the purchases drove it up. So, either they have to credit speculators with also driving down the price of oil or they imagine that speculators aren't in it for the money, but just to be evil.

Likewise, I have been told if ANWR put 200,000 barrels of oil on the market, OPEC would just reduce production by 200,0000 barrels. But that only makes sense if OPEC wants to create a shortage, not if they want money. If they are maximizing their profits, they may reduce production to the optimal cartel price, but they will not reduce it by the same amount we put on the market. In fact, as more non-cartel sources arise, the advantages of the cartel decline, meaning they would only maintain OPEC if they were interested in doing harm more than making money.

But that often seems to be the argument, for both conspiracy theories and for supposedly sensible critics, they seem to imagine that people are engaged not in activities which benefit them, but instead in activities with the sole goal of harming others. I just don't buy it.

I admit there is evil in the world, but, except for a very few deranged individuals, evil most often arises from someone having a poor understanding of what is to his benefit, or an inability to take others into account when pursuing his own goals, it does not arise from a desire to simply harm others. For example, the holocaust was not inspired by a desire to harm Jews, but from the horribly mistaken theory of nationalism (still promoted by a few like Buchanan), which argued that the German nation needed to be free of other nationalities. Or Stalin's exterminations, which arose from a combination of the doctrines of communism and his own paranoia, but in any event were driven by his pursuit of his own interest, not a desire to harm others.

So I just cannot accept these theories that postulate people are setting out to do harm rather than benefit themselves. Greed as a motive force for a group of people I can accept, though often even there the application is absurd, but simple malice as the sole motivation seems unlikely except for a few rare individual cases.

POSTSCRIPT

Note that I am not saying that revenge or anger can't drive an individual, I am simply saying that it is very unlikely more than one person would be motivated by the same desire for harm to another, and, without some parallel selfish motivation, I can't see  the desire to do harm driving a group of people into concerted action for long. I have just never seen a group stay together long unless there is some direct benefit to them from concerted action.

Even seeming exceptions, like the PLO are not truly exceptions. They expect to benefit by creating a Palestinian state. The same applies to al Qaida, who expect to at least drive infidels from Moslem lands, or eventually establish a worldwide caliphate. Their immediate goal; may be the infliction of harm, but they do so to achieve a longer term selfish goal.

My problem with the descriptions of conspiracies, or of OPEC and speculators, is that they are described as being motivated by the desire to do harm alone, and that just doesn't appear to happen in the real world. Supervillains exist only in comic books, in the real world people are motivated by selfish goals, not by a simple desire to "do bad".