It doesn't take a conspiracy for all that. Most people are dumb af.
In order to compete against a powerful company, you have to be highly intelligent and have the drive, greed, connections and initial capital to do it.
Even then, it's a crap shoot whether you'll succeed at beating them or not.
You would need all the traits mentioned above, huge stones, and a true deep philosophical motive to overthrow a government. Not sure why anyone would want to even try to overthrow the US government. It's not perfect, but it does it's job sufficiently for the most part. Also, most people are well off by historic standards, including the poor. Most importantly, if you lose you're f**ked.
You don't need to try to create dumb workers, they manifest just fine on their own.