Or perhaps there are meetings in boardrooms where the upper echelon of a given sector of the economy work hand in hand with thinktanks, highly paid psychologist consultants, PR firms, journalists, and media executives(at the ownership level) to design and execute strategies that encourage whole populations to act against their best interests by entering into these sorts of centralized arrangements.
Why does everyone always jump to "human nature" as the explanation ? I'll tell you why it's because they have no visibility into the 10+ billion dollar/year PR industry that is operating in our midst. Human nature does factor into this though.. it's human nature to assume that you're not personally vulnerable to suggestion and manipulation, so people tend to write it off even though statistically speaking the odds are that they can be influenced, and are being influenced.