I basically agree with what you're saying here, yeah, basically a bunch of totally unquailified PTA-like organizations are actually responsible for a surprising amount of norms and standards in the US, which are treated as if they are very smart and good rules, made by very smart and good people.

I think the stylistic quibble here is... what you in your example call 'not a conspiracy', I call 'a conspiracy'.

A conspiracy doesn't need to be secret or well hidden or non obvious, non mundane.

A conspiracy is literally just when a bunch of people decide to do something, and then do things toward that goal.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/conspiracy

Conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to commit an illegal act, along with an intent to achieve the agreement's goal. Most U.S. jurisdictions also require an overt act toward furthering the agreement.

But, we as a culture have a rather hysterical relationship with the word conspiracy, because it is so often used by people promoting ... basically either extremely racist, or convoluted/incoherent, or sci-fi nonsense level plots.

But but, taking the very literal and basic concept of what the word means... and just replacing 'illegal' with 'immoral' or 'devious' or somesuch... people conspire very often and frequently, and its usually extremely straightforward with little to no significant attempt to 'hide' the conspiracy at all.