Before Snowden, anyone accusing government of spying on uts citizens was called paranoid. People calling 2008 buble were not believed eithet

Some folks just have an irrational faith in establishment followijg the rules, even when its obviois that there is noone to police them

I don't think that great analysis and random paranoia have to be disconnected. But given how humans treat money, goods, and jobs it's highly likely that some combination of those humans will do everything they can to maintain the specifics of this status quo.

Is there a correlation between en masse smear campaigns, bot attacks against retail, and the uber rich losing money?

We are talking about billions of losses. Someone somewhere is trying to minimize them as their full time jobs.