People intuitively know the government is corrupt and the system is rigged. However, the leaders have been successful in covering this up. Conspiracy theories allows the masses to appease suspicions, but in ways that don't reveal the reality of the status quo.
For example, Area 51, was a top secret test site for blue sky R&D aircraft. The government allowed the UFO and alien conspiracies theories to grow, because this was a good cover to fool the enemy. The enemy would think this was a kook zone, and not a secret test site, since people were allowed to camp there and report UFO's and ET.
One conspiracy, that has not been discussed, was the murder of the young man who leaked the hacked DNC e-mails to Wiki-leaks.
On 10 July 2016, Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Conrad Rich was shot and killed just after 4 AM in Washington, D.C. Rich's tragic death was undoubtedly destined to feed a number of conspiracy theories due to his line of work and the proximity of the 2016 presidential election. Among those theories were myriad conflicting claims that Rich was covertly working to expose election fraud, collaborating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on an unspecified investigation, or a recycled assertion that he was imminently to testify against Hillary Clinton when he was gunned down.
The current theory was he was lured by a DNC hit team, posing as the FBI. The hit team was supposedly captured but nothing more was said about this. The DNC staffer was a Bernie Sanders supporter and was trying to show the rigged DNC that Bernie claimed was fixing the nomination process.
An interesting statistic, for a conspiracy theory is, the Clintons have a lot of former friends who have turned up dead. The count is now at 47. Is this coincidence or just the fodder for another conspiracy theory. Google; friends of the Clintons who turn up dead to see for yourself.