I'm not quite sure I see the connection between complex systems and conspiracy theories. While it is quite obvious that much of human and natural activity is emergent from complex systems, how does that rule out the possibility of intential economic predation? Is the mafia a fiction? Wouldn't that amount to a large scale conspiracy? If you do admit that organized crime is a fact of life, what is the rationale for drawing a line at some level of profit driven cooperation? The argument is necessarily baseless.
If your intention actually is to be rational and not just exonerating an increasingly corrupt status quo, consider this distinction between capitalism and a market based economy;
As linear, goal oriented creatures in a cyclical, reciprocal, feedback driven reality, people see money as the signal to extract and store from the noise of society and the economy, while markets need it to circulate. Consequently ever more has to be added and ever more corrosive methods of storing what has been extracted have to be devised.
Since most money functions as a contract, where the asset is backed by a debt, this means sufficient debt has to be generated to store the amount of wealth a society enamored by the bottom line feels it needs.
One way is to squeeze the amount of money flowing through the general economy, causing it to run on debt and pull that saved money back into circulation. In which case, it seems capitalism requires austerity for the general population, in order to sustain the value of investment wealth.
The other primary method is having the government as debtor of last resort. It is safe to say the capital markets could not function, without governments siphoning up trillions in otherwise surplus capital. Where would it go otherwise? Derivatives? Apple stock? Ferraris?
Given much of this money flows to the military, it might explain why we have endless, strategically inept wars and no one is court marshalled, or even held to account, just given jobs as media mouthpieces.
The secret sauce of capitalism is public debt backing private wealth.
Safe to say, what I've outlined here can only amount to a rather enormous conspiracy, going back generations and I'm willing to argue the point, if you think you can disprove it.
As the executive and regulatory function of society, government is analogous to the central nervous system. While money and finance, as society's value circulation system, is analogous to blood and the circulation system of the body. Government was private once, but when society outgrew the inefficiencies of monarchy, it was shed. Finance is currently having its, "Let them eat cake." moment. It is becoming increasingly apparent this stored money has become more of a scab over the living flesh of the society, than a viable part of it. Just as monarchy became a scab.
What you are seeing is simply those larger emergent behaviors on a scale apparently far beyond your ability to process.
