Re-reading this, and I think I may have misunderstood part of what you were saying. While it's true that people do conspire, for the purposes of this post, and for my thinking in general, I would not refer to those instances as "conspiracy theories". "Conspiracy theory" is - by tradition, if not by definition - meant to apply to false beliefs about conspiracies. (Though I realize that, many conspiracy theorists have tried to "reclaim" the term, like homosexuals did with "queer", etc...)