CHAPTER 46
LEAD BY CONSENT
The modern corporation is like medieval England. And medieval England was essentially a mafia state. At the top, the don of dons was the all-powerful king. Power flowed personally from the king to the big dons (aristocrats), and knights of the shire whose job was to protect the people; in return they got protection money in the form of tax. And all justice was personal: if you were on the right side of your don, you were looked after. If you fell foul of the don, life would tend to become nasty, short and brutish. It was a method of rule in which consent was passive: as long as the peasants were not revolting, the system ran fairly well. It only got upset when another source of wealth and power emerged: the towns.
