I mean, it might not be that - but it could still be a series of smaller decisions from people who could have known better deciding to choose greed and creating/reinforcing a marketplace where the competition likewise needs to choose greed to compete. It doesn't need to be orchestrated by a table of cloaked figures to still be an additive conspiracy where they all knew what they were doing yet did it anyway as incentives aligned. I'm not sure what in the OPs post makes it require some cartoonish villainy, when a decentralized herd of morally bankrupt people can serve just fine and be just as evil in the end!

I do get the reluctance there though to doubt collective conscious evil action. Which is fine - it's usually far more likely it was done in a "market incentives aligning" way, even when they're entirely conscious (still evil) moves. I think those dark board rooms do happen still, but they're subtle, or relegated to just approving preplanned media narrative directions and such. They do make long term concerted plans, and some of those plans can be downright dark - but they also just go with the flow a lot, or plain fuck up on executions with better intentions.

I think the takeaway should be that neither maliciousness nor incompetence is really required to make evil exist - it's an ever-present network effect potential of the [capitalist] system itself, which will trigger due to some mixture of the above regardless. You can't especially blame greedy people for capitalizing on it, nor incompetent people from dropping the ball with it. It's simply a complex system that's probably due for a better design - and/or it's something we need to try and live with (survive through). Though that could all just be my own personal bias as a systems engineer who considers those the start and end point of most discussions.

Glad my point made it across though, thanks for saying that!