By Noah Dawson
These days, conspiracy theories about COVID-19, vaccines, Bill Gates, 5G, and plenty more are popular. And, to be honest, it all seems kinda ridiculous to me. I'm not going to waste my time looking into any of these theories in specific, because I'd rather take a look at conspiracy theories more generally.
As someone who has been watching local politics, I'm no stranger to politicians and bureaucrats doing sketchy stuff. But, to be honest, it seems to me that most of the time, when a politician does something dumb, it can be explained by a fact much more simple than any conspiracy theory: the politician is probably just incompetent.
Of course, this isn't to say that there aren't politicians who abuse their power or people who abuse the incompetent tendencies of politicians. Still, in most cases, conspiracy theories can be primarily explained by incompetence. It doesn't even take a particularly incompetent person to be an incompetent politician. I wrote a couple weeks ago about the failed central planning of epidemiologists strangling the economy (and by extension, the ability of people to feed themselves). This, in fact, tends to be the case generally. No central authority can efficiently create plans to deal with the real complexities of human society. In fact, with how large and bloated the federal government is, it often stumbles over itself, causing further waste and inefficiency.
Put more simply, I'm a believer in Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."