For most of the employees of big corporations, the power of the government to make them happy or miserable is very small: a rise in bank rate may slightly affect the costs of a mortgage; over a long period the establishment of a health Service, the abolition of military Service, the building of roads, the preservation of the countryside, and so on may raise the general quality of their lives … The power of the Corporation over their lives is far greater. They can be told to go and live in another part of the country, or another part of the world … they can be publicly exalted in the eyes of all their colleagues … or publicly humiliated, passed over in favour of a subordinate; and these are not things that happen to all alike but specifically and personally to them. Of course they are free to resign, just as the Neapolitan could go and live in Venice; but he might arrive with a record and a reputation … The government is like Christendom, an overriding System of law which only very marginally affects the actual physical conditions of their lives, but gives them an illusion of equality in that their vote weighs as heavy in the ballot box as the Chairman's or the Managing Director's.