People use the word "conspiracy theory" as a shield against their own ignorance.

"If I don't know about it, if it sounds 'spooky' to me, it must be because it's a conspiracy theory, and therefore it is wrong," is essentially what runs through their minds.

The reality is that top-down legislation is the norm rather than the exception, and there is plenty of evidence. It's not written by Joe on the street. It's not organic. It is top-down and imposed. This is what @kdheiwns rightly observes here, and in other fields like how all of a sudden every car manufacturer just up and decided simultaneously that it was a good thing to install spyware into all of their cars.