As a boomer trying to jettison the baggage of such notions as ‘cause/effect’, ‘intent/outcome’, and ‘intelligence/ignorance’, I am becoming afflicted with a different way of seeing things that is not easy for me to share, though I will try.
Perhaps we could agree to consider financial systems as instruments through which we (others) impose forces, the economy itself seems to me to be the arena wherein such forces are exercised, observed, felt, etc. The ecomomy is the environment wherein human action occurs, not the instrument of manipulation itself. Would it be fair to consider Bitcoin an emerging Financial System?
Being manipulated may also be understood as ‘believing’. Believing has its Pros and Cons, but it needs no assignment of intelligence or truth. People are all believers of some sort or the other. Some objective judgment on whether the economy is fair or not fair doesn’t matter to what emerges as much as whether it is acceptable to those with options. I do believe options are emerging and acceptability is being reoriented. I try to see that as based not on knowledge but based on what works somehow within a community of believers. Growing such a community seems a worthwhile human endeavor. There are many ways of participating in that endevor.
Those who have benefited from a stable complexity delivering such benefit to them may be no less manipulated than others. We all ways of protecting that stability, yet our means do vary. Change is always a threat and always a necessity to growth. The information we share in social contact might best be understood as more about ourselves than the world. That a set of such information can result in a prevailing consensus does not make it true, but it does make it possible. I think of that as a good thing.