ABOUT
CONSPIRACY THEORIES

In this section of the School's website, we attempt to provide those interested in researching this subject with a primer and links to several websites dealing specificially with conspiracy theories that offer a balanced, objective approach. In 1984, the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER) first published a pamphlet (written by its editorial staff) titled America's Unknown Enemy: Beyond Conspiracy. With permission from AIER, SCI is making this informative and provocative pamphlet available online. Readers are encouraged to contact AIER for the printed version of this pamphlet (which was revised in 1993 from the original).

I invite SCI visitors to submit your reactions to the analysis provided by AIER's editorial staff. Much has occurred in the world even since 1993. Here in the United States the President with the cooperation of the U.S. Congress has rekindled the Reagan era strategy of reducing the burden on taxation on the wealthiest citizens on the vague assertion that this will stimulate private investment in job-creation. That did not occur during the Reagan era; most of the added disposable income went into speculative investments -- in the stock market, in the land market and in commercial real estate. Faced with reduced revenue, the Federal government has to find ways to reduce spending (which it has never done) or borrow the funds back from the very wealthy citizens who gained most from the tax cuts. Why did the President and his advisers and so many members of the U.S. Congress take these steps? Greed? Ignorance? Conspiracy?

We live in a complex and rather dangerous world. Few societies are organized to secure and protect individual liberty. Rather, the socio-political arrangements and institutions of most societies secure and protect privilege. The social democracies have never been able to shed ancient traditions that established the basis for landed aristocracy and the increasng control over locations and natural resource lands by a global elite.

Over the last thirty or forty years, there have been many investigations into why wealth and political power in the social democracies have become increasingly concentrated. These investigations have formed the basis for asserting a long history of conspiracy on the part of a self-proclaimed elite to rule over the world's economy.