So, what is the end result of the ECC’s efforts? Waterhouse stares at the ceiling, which is starting to become fuzzily visible as the sun rises in the west, or the north, or wherever the hell it rises here in the Southern Hemisphere. He takes a quick inventory of the world and finds that basically the ECC is running the entire planet, good countries and bad countries alike. That all successful and respected men are minions of the ECC, or at least are so scared of it that they pretend to be. Non-ECC members live on the fringes of society, like prostitutes, or have been driven deep underground and must waste tremendous amounts of time and energy keeping up a false front. If you knuckle under and become a minion of the ECC, you get to have a career, a family, kids, wealth, house, pot roasts, clean laundry, and the respect of all the other ECC minions. You have to pay dues in the form of chronic nagging sexual irritation which can only be relieved by, and at the discretion and convenience of, one person, the person designated for this role by the ECC: your wife. On the other hand, if you reject the ECC and its works, you can’t, by definition, have a family, and your career options are limited to pimp, gangster, and forty-year enlisted sailor.