Personally I'd be much more worried about the big lobby groups (guns, oil, pharmaceutical etc) than free masons. At least the masons are meant to have some kind of moral code other than profit maximisation.    Personally I can see how these secret societies would help people to get on in life because they meet a lot of like-minded people and get to know each other, offer each other jobs etc but the same could be said of most golf clubs couldn't it? I mean anywhere people meet up you're going to end up doing some networking even if its subconscious.