Even a relatively tiny company can have a huge impact on your life. Say you're interested in a niche hobby, so niche there's only one company who organises meet-ups and events around that hobby. The best friend of the chairman runs the main online forum for that hobby.
If you have a falling-out with either of those people, or their friends - you're going to lose all the social aspects of your hobby, and they're probably going to slander you to everyone they know. And people will repeat the lies, assuming that the chairman of the major event of the niche hobby wouldn't lie... and on and on.
The people who seek these roles absolutely love this, though homeowners' associations are probably the more familiar example of the same power structures.
If it's that niche that no one else forms groups around it, that sounds like an issue in and of itself.
>If you have a falling-out with either of those people, or their friends - you're going to lose all the social aspects of your hobby, and they're probably going to slander you to everyone they know.
sounds like your average small town experience. People can be cruel, they don't need a company to enable that.