A mass of individual desires and a conspiracy have similar outcomes, but I think they are different in the cure. 

A gathering of individual desires suggests that the system and power structures give incentives to act and behave in a certain way. For instance, if we don't place a price on pollution, then there is no real incentive for the mass of the population to favour a cleaner ecosystem. To paraphrase, it is a bit odd to expect that a system that favours maximising personal gain could produce a net social good. In this interpretation (my preferred, unfortunately), people act in a greater good way only if it somehow benefits them (not necessarily in a financial sense). Thus, the way to harness this is to create rules and power structures that channel these individual desires. 

In a conspiracy (please correct me if I'm wrong!), the idea is that there is something that is holding back the natural development of society. In that case, the cure is to target the cancer and then things will go to their natural state. It is a more optimistic view, as it suggests that if people were left to develop freely then a potentially better society would emerge? Although, I'm much more pessimistic about this. I would suggest that even if that was possible, a new "power centre" would develop.