What are arguments against conspiracies about 5 men that run the US?

[marcamillion]

I know this might sound like a silly question, but I constantly find myself in heated debates/exchanges with people that honestly believe that there is a small cabal of (say 5 - 6) men that secretly 'pull all the strings' behind the scenes.<p>What are some arguments I can use to actually convince them that that is impossible or just not true?

[Umalu]

The world is too complex for a small cabal to be controlling everything. This complexity is difficult for our puny minds to comprehend, so we instinctively latch onto simple models with a Wizard of Oz at the center, pulling all the levers and pushing all the buttons to make everything work the way it does. The ancient Greeks thought Zeus and the other gods on Mount Olympus controlled everything. The modern mind turns to secretive cabals. Same idea.

[hasenj]

To play the devil's advocate, a secret cabal wouldn't be running every little detail. It would decide things like "bring a black man to presidency", "next year we're invading country X".

Not that I think such a cabal exists per se, but certain powerful groups can make such decisions, and these groups do exist.

[newt]

Define "run" ? They don't decide what you eat for lunch, so what do they decide and what don't they? I ask since you can't argue against a statement that isn't even coherent. All you can do is point out that it makes no sense.

Bear in mind Hanlon's Razor : Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

Also, as others said, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

If it bothers you and is senseless, choose other people to hang around with.

[marcamillion]

Run meaning Obama is just their puppet.

I have always chosen to hang out with people that are more like-minded. However, just over Christmas, I had the pleasure of interacting with family which brought up this question.

Although I don't see them much, some of them are pretty educated. It's kinda sad, actually, to see them truly believe this stuff. So it's more out of me genuinely wanting to help them, not prove them wrong.

[RVK]

I've long believed that a civilization's natural, or sensible power structure reflects two things: the communications technology available, and the size of the economic/political structure. Greek city states could have a (slave-owning) democracy, because they were small enough that politically relevant information could travel to most of the citizens fast enough for them to act on a relevant opinion. But as states became empires, the communications became stretched across wide distances, and a more autocratic system had to come into play - ordinary citizens could not get relevant information fast enough to make political choices.

But as we got modern postal services, the telegraph and so on, economic events on one side of a continent became pertinent to people on the other, and they would hear of them in short order. The technology made people feel invested in a nation's politics, so they could, and felt they had a right to, participate.

So I would have said that in today's information society, in the age of TV and Wikileaks, a 5-man dictatorship can't effectively function. Too many people feel too invested in national and world events to permit it without a Soviet-style iron control of channels of information. But the effect of corporate money on what kind of information gets mainstream attention is a whole other question.

[zck]

There's no evidence for it. It's wrong to believe a claim without supporting evidence.

[timrobinson]

Occam's razor?

[david_shaw]

> Occam's razor?

Yup, came here to post just that.

Additionally, you can take some cards from Skeptics in general, and assert that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Burden of proof lies not on the skeptic, but on the one with the ludicrous claim.