Nepotism: When Hiring the Best Just Won't Do

Nepotism is something that is very hard to avoid, and very hard to resist, even if you know it may be the wrong thing to do. We all love helping out families get ahead, but you're also costing someone else an opportunity when you play ball. Learn all about nepotism in today's episode.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland over there,
and that's the McDonald triad. Stuff you should know, McDonald triad.

(00:23):
What's that? Really? I'm just wow, you are spacey today.
We literally talked about it ten minutes ago. Oh that yeah, sorry,
you know bed wedding, fire starting harmony add I was
thinking of I call fire starting McDonald I call bed wedding,
all right, Jerry's animal harmor um. Well, we know that's
not true. I was the first thing I thought it

(00:47):
was a McDonald's because I am totally spacey today. And
plus you could probably use the McDonald's right now, I'll
bet no. Well, I already ate, but if I hadn't
have eaten ramen, I could have totally partied on a
on a quarter pounder. Quarter pounder, definitely not a big Mac, right,
I don't do big Max. It's the sauce. It's a
weirdo sauce. Yeah, I just I don't. I don't do it.
And you know you don't need another third piece of bread. No,

(01:10):
it is a great standard of measure, though, isn't it.
What do you mean big max? You know this is
ex big max of calories or something. It's a unit
of measure here in America. I don't think I've ever
had a big Mac in my life. I've had like
maybe one, maybe two. Yeah, I've pretty much learned my
lesson the first time. I'm a quarter pounder guy. I
like quarter pounders. But really there's nothing better than just

(01:31):
their plain old double cheeseburger. Oh, just their a little smashburger,
but the double cheeseburger. And there's a difference. They have
a double cheeseburger and a Mick double. Did you know that?
From what I can discern, what I can discern, the
only difference is the double cheeseburger has two slices of cheese.

(01:51):
The Mick double has one. Everything else is the same.
Where's the one piece of cheese? Why would you even
sell it like that? It's weird. It doesn't make any sense.
You could say, mcdoubell with just one slice of cheese.
That makes stupid, is what they should say. Like, Yeah,
pull forward and hang your head in shame, and we'll
give you your stupid sandwich. I'm gonna go to McDonald's
in order a McDLT remember those, Oh yeah, the hot

(02:14):
side right, yeah, and you could like fold the little
styrofi containing, which I mean it kind of makes sense
because even though I don't do the big garden on
the burger anyway, part of the reason I don't is
because I don't like hot, soggy lettuce. So the mcdealt
would solve that. It would, But it was really just
like here's even more styro poem. Yeah, and like, yes,

(02:36):
it was terrible for the earth, but that was like
the look of my youth, you know what I'm Yeah, well, no,
the styrofoam contain everything came in everything, Like their cinnamon
roll used to come in a styrofoam container, for God's sake. Yeah,
you'd be like, can I have a pack of salt
and they put it in a styron container. Yeah, all right.
That was got some big McDonald's dollars coming our way. Now.

(02:59):
So I want to paint a picture for you, Chuck.
Let's say you owned a McDonald's franchise here in town,
and uh, you decided that you wanted your your daughter
to take over the business. Sure, if you just said, okay,
I'm ready to retire. It's your turn. Now, come on in.

(03:20):
We'll see you later. Good luck. You would not be
doing what's known as nepotism, right, you'd be doing it wrong.
There's a right way to do it in a wrong
way to do it. Yeah, but either way, what you're
engaged in is nepotism. Yeah, they say, wait, I've really
pulled that one out of your butt. Yeah. Um, I

(03:44):
didn't know if you meant pulled it off or pulled
it out of your butt. I meant pulled it off.
You did very well. Nice transition with the Nipotis that's
all I was looking for? Uh? Yeah, they do say.
I mean, some experts will say, if you do have
a family business and you want to have been actually
hand that over your kids, if if you really want
to do that the right way, have them work outside

(04:04):
the or in that industry, maybe for another company for
a while, gaining some experience outside your own company, because
it can be very problematic to the other employees when
that happens, because even if they're qualified, there's a bit
of a target sometimes on their back. There's Yeah, it's
unfair to them, it's unfair to the other employees. It
says a lot about you too. It sends signals, whether

(04:27):
you mean it or not. It sends signals that you're
insecure in your leadership and you need to surround yourself
with people who you know will generally agree with you,
and even if they don't agree with you, you are
bringing them in in a position where they really owe
you a favor. There's a lot of opportunity for people
to be like, this person is not even qualified for
this position. I'm more qualified. I'm just not their son

(04:50):
or daughter. This is b s. And then it also
has a real chilling effect on morale around the company too,
where it's like, no matter what I do or how
good I am, um, I'm never going to get ahead
because this this employer, this boss is into nepotism and
I'm not related to him, so I might as well
just quit or go somewhere else or milk the clock. Yeah,

(05:12):
I mean this. This can go take so many forms,
like it is a time honored tradition to start a
small family business to pass along to your children, Like
there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But then there's also
the scenario where you know mom and dad start a
business and the sons of gambling and and living up,

(05:32):
tripping the lights, fantastic, painting the town brown. Yeah, basically
acting like Oscar Wilde or something. Yeah. Uh, and then
it's just handed the keys to the kingdom and they
run it into the ground. But that that happens. Yeah,
there's a saying. The first generation starts the business, the
second generation carries on the business, the third generation ruins

(05:54):
the business. We grow the seed beasts nature, No, we
plant the seed. Nature grows the seed. She sowed the seed.
What did you just make that up? I think that
was It sounds like a hippie T shirt the Young
Ones with like Coco pellion it or something. If I
would have done it in my Young Ones accent, you
probably would have. Did you watch that The Young Yeah,

(06:15):
the British TV show that. How is that on The
Young Ones? Uh? What that's saying? Was it like a
recurring thing or no? I think it was just in
one episode. It just stands out to me, Well, I
guess I love the Young Ones. I haven't seen that
in a while. I'm sure they're like eight people that
heard that were like, oh my god, Young Ones. So
there is a there is a right way to do nepotism.

(06:37):
But for the most part, especially in America, especially in
modern Western society, nepotism is largely frowned upon by the
general population. But like you said, it's it's time honored,
it's age old. And there's this great article that we're

(07:00):
working from um by the Grabst who basically says, like
you can make the case that nepotism is what civilization
was originally built on. That that's that really what you're seeing.
This disregard or this dislike or disdain for nepotism is
actually a tension between a meritocracy and nepotism, which are

(07:23):
essentially to opposite socio political sides of the same coin. Okay, Yeah,
and it's interesting too. I had no idea that in
the animal uh, in in biology and the Animal Kingdom,
that they actually refer to animal behaviors as like things
like natural selection is nepotism. Yeah, like kin selection, where

(07:44):
you will go out of the great podcast that we did,
I could remember if we actually did it or not.
We did huh, we did it, we did it. But
they will talk about in the Animal Kingdom things like, um,
like a squirrel is more likely let's to give a
warning call like a cock or a whatever a squirrel does.

(08:04):
That was a squirrel, okay, Um, to give a warning
call of a of a predator approaching if they're near
family members, and if there are no family members around,
they're kind of like, what else, good luck, which proves
your point that squirrels are jerks seeing hell Todd and
they only can they only think about their own family wise.

(08:26):
But that is what if you're a wildlife biologist, you
would call that nepotism. Yeah, okay, so there is a this,
there's actually an equation for it. Yeah, take it away, Okay,
because I looked at that you're talking about the Hamilton's rule. Yes,
but I got you know, my eyes kind of glazed over.

(08:48):
It's tough. Hopefully we won't go down a false positives
rabbit hole, yeah, like we did in that episode. But
there's this guy, Mr Hamilton's. Dr Hamilton's to us, there's
a million things he hasn't done, and uh, what his
name was, William D. Hamiltons. This is from the sixties.
This struck me as it would like it would have
been old. But whatever, he's a technocratic biologist and he

(09:10):
basically said there there is a formula for calculating why
an animal would do something that seems altruistic, and it
has to do with nepotism or kin selection. And this
equation is our times B is greater than C done.
Okay to stop there. Did we talk about this and

(09:31):
kin selection? We had to it, but I don't think so, man,
it does not. I think we talked about it without
ever saying the name of it, and the formula itself
danced around it. Basically, So just real quick, are is
the genetic related nous of the the person doing the
altruistic act and the person benefiting B is the benefit

(09:54):
of it? And then that has to be so multiply
those two things, and that would be has to be
greater than see which is the cost. So the little
worker bees and the worker ants that know, hey, I'm
never gonna rise to the top here, but I'm gonna
bust my butt for the queen because everyone else will
benefit from it. So that so for each worker be

(10:17):
the cost to be one. They're one, they're going to die,
they're not going to be able to reproduce and pass
on jeans. But they're related to the queens, say by
sharing fifty of their genes, and the queen is going
to go on and make ten thousand new bees. So
you've got ten thousand times point five is the left
hand of the equation, and that is way way greater

(10:39):
than cost, which is one. So therefore Hamilton's rule would
apply in that circumstance. It seems dumb to me. I
think that there's way more going on in life than that.
I don't think you can boil animal behavior down to
a formula, especially such a simple formula. I mean, sigma
doesn't even appear in this formula. It's that simple. We

(11:00):
can read this formula. It's that simple. Yeah, I almost
got it. It's that simple. So I think it's reductive.
I think, is what I'm trying to say, which is
alert a word I just picked up recently. You've been
thrown it around a lot. I've heard it before, but
it's really kind of made sense to me lately. So
I think that it's a reductive formula, and I uh
dismay the the use of it. All right. Uh, This

(11:23):
I found super interesting is the origins of the word itself.
Sometimes word origins are kind of cool, like this, Well,
you're big time into it. Aren't you. Yeah, when it
you know, sometimes it'll lit'll light my fire, you know
what I'm saying, Like the McDonald triad, but it has
the Latin root nepos an ep o s which means nephew.
And this came about because of Catholic priests, who, as

(11:46):
everyone knows, aren't supposed to make sex, so they don't
not always, okay, sometimes they do, and sometimes they have children,
and in order to promote their uns h without without
having to say yeah, like my son exactly, they would
call them their nephew. And that's where it actually, that's

(12:10):
where the root nepos means nephew. That's where it comes from. Yeah.
I saw somewhere, I think in Adam So you know
Saul Bellows, the writer, Yeah, yeah, his son Adam wrote
very very long article in the Atlantic in the early
two thousand's arguing in favor of nepotism, I think unsuccessfully,
but I think he said one of the remaining definitions

(12:32):
of nephew is an illegitimate son of a Catholic priest.
Oh really still today weird? Yeah. And then the three
types that that the grabster I like to liken it
to the core Leone family, um, self determined, coercive and opportunistic.
So self determined being when you take a family job

(12:55):
a family member offers because it aligns with your own
career goals, which would be funny, that's a that's pretty ideal,
sunny Corleon, Oh, I got you. I thought you met Sonny.
Like coercive nepotism is when you take a job because
you feel forced into it, which is clearly Michael, Michael. Uh.
And then opportunistic, which is I don't feel pressured and

(13:19):
I just take take the job because it's the easiest path,
which is Fredo through and through. That really works, it
really does nice job. Interesting, I mean it stood out
to me like uh, sore thumb. Sure it did not
stick out like a sore thumb to me. That's really something. Yeah,
okay about that. You want to take a break, Yeah,

(13:39):
and I might just leave drop your mind, all right,
see you? M h okay, everybody, I talk Chuck into

(14:06):
staying for the rest of the episode during the ad break,
I'm here. So um, you've got the definition of nepotism
in the biological sense. There's also the sociological sense we
kind of touched on in um in the workplace. But
we still have even said what nepotism is, just like
we do, okay, Well, so nepotism is basically doling out favors,

(14:33):
typically jobs, by a person in a position of power
to people who are their relatives. There's another very very
closely related um thing called crony ism, which is doing
the same thing but handing it out to people who
are friends or friends of friends and building a network.
And whether it's a business or a political institution or whatever,

(14:55):
where there are favors done, reciprocal favors owed, and you
had this very dense web that overlays that company or
that overlays that institution. It makes it very tough for
outsiders to get into, which is why a nepotism. Nepotism
is the opposite of a meritocracy. A meritocracy is you

(15:16):
are good at this job, this job is open, we
want you to come fill it. Instead with nepotism, you
say we've got this position open. Um, let's get my
nephew meaning my illegitimate son in here, because I want
him to prosper in life in this position will enrich him. Yeah,
it's a really tricky thing because you know, you want

(15:39):
to do friends and family favors. Uh, but it's a
slippery slope if they're not qualified. Even if they are,
it's you know, has it's just has an ugly connotation
to it. But myself, I would be like, Yeah, I
want to want to hook up my friends and family
right and I want to be hooked up right. So
you kind of you kind of hit it. And it

(16:00):
seems to me from everybody, And I don't necessarily agree
with this, but it seems like everybody says it's not
going anywhere. The best you can hope for is a
healthy mix, And I guess it seems like a healthy
mix is the best way to do it, because you
don't want a pure meritocracy, because what you end up
with is an institution that has all brains and no heart,

(16:25):
Whereas if you have the opposite side, the other side
of the spectrum, pure nepotism, you have lots of heart
but no brains. So you want a mixture of the two.
And in one of the places where nepotism has traditionally
been frowned upon here in the US is in government,
Like we basically say, you go do whatever you want

(16:49):
in your own business, run it however you like. Even
a publicly traded company that started as a family company
will sometimes still have a family member running the show.
But with government, we we say no, nobody can do
anything nepotistic in government. We've said it from the outset,
and we've also broken that rule from the outside too.
It's a long standing American tradition to include nepotism and government. Yeah,

(17:14):
whether or not you're John F. Kennedy and you say, well,
I'm gonna make Bobby my attorney general even though he
has no law experience, or if you're the current would
you say that was a great Ted Kennedy but not
John F. Kennedy, Or if you know the current president
giving his his daughter and son in law positions on

(17:36):
his White House staff, which I thought this was interesting
them the law um as far as doing that. After
John F. Kennedy appointed his brother as U S Attorney General,
there was a law passed federal law saying you cannot
appoint a family member to an important position. But in
two thousand and seventeen, the d o J said a

(17:58):
president can a point a family member to their own
personal White House staff. But after FOIA documents UH were
released in two thousand seventeen Freedom of Information Act, we
learned that since the Nixon administration, you could not even
a point white House staff, and it's kind of was

(18:20):
in it was overruled. There was a reversal of this,
and was it to allow Trump to do that? I
think it was just a reversal of the pattern, Not
like they said, Okay, we'll reverse our ruling. There was
just a history of of the d O J ruling
against nepotism in White House staff. No, it says the
January two seventeen ruling was a reversal, Right, a reversal

(18:41):
of the pattern since Nixon, I think is what they're saying. Oh,
it says reversal of the policy. So I thought they
literally changed the rule. So what I saw is that
the ruling against it is actually counter two the tradition
of the presidents picking his advisors without any input or

(19:05):
oversight from Congress. Like the government, the president's advisors are
supposed to be the president's own picks, and whether it's
family or not, t s that's the president's own picks.
That apparently is the way that it's always been. But
then since Nixon, they started shooting down that idea. Right,
And the reason we're talking about politics now is because

(19:26):
it's one of the clearer examples of um how it
can go wrong. Because the reason nepotism is so harmful
in politics is because the we're set up in a
way in this country, in such a way supposedly to
have a system of checks and balances to where no
one person is above the law. And obviously, if you
fill positions with family members, the rule of law and

(19:50):
the good of the country is has a very good
chance of coming in second place to protecting your family member. Yeah.
So one of the one of the explanations I saw
was that the reason nepotism is bad for democracy is
when you have people working in a democracy and the
actual government of the democracy, those people are supposed to

(20:11):
be defenders of that democracy and loyal to the democracy,
not loyal to the person in power. Nepotism inverts that
to where the people who are running the show are
loyal to the person in power, not the institution. So
what you're seeing again, right, there is a tension between
the meritocracy, where you have people who are loyal and

(20:31):
dedicated to the institution, and nepotism, where you have people
who are loyal and dedicated to the person empower who's
doling out the jobs. And the reason that's bad for
democracy is the people who owe their job to that
person in a very direct manner, UM may look the
other way on wrongdoing. They may also not be qualified

(20:53):
for the jobs, so they may not even be aware
that there's stuff that they're supposed to be loyal to
that they're not being loyal to. UM. Like in the tuition,
there's a lot of pitfalls and prat falls to nepotism
as a as a general rule of thumb in a presidency. Yeah,
and I know brought it up before, but it still
makes me laugh every time I think of Jared Kushner

(21:14):
taking his first tour of the White House after the election,
when he was meeting all the people and he said,
everyone's so nice. You know how many of these people
are staying on They're like nobody they worked for President Obama.
That's not how this works. And oh is he is
he like a Democrat? Or was he a Democrat? Originally?

(21:35):
I don't know. I saw it back in like an
article from two thousand, fifteen or sixteen, and he said, um,
he was asked if he would be voting for Hillary
or for Trump, and he said family first, and they said, well,
there's pretty good reason why why he was given this
position of power. He's very loyal to family. Apparently when

(21:55):
his dad was in jail for tax fraud, he went
visited him every week. And if you are, if you
are a candidate for nepotism, you uh, like loyalty to
family is basically that's your qualification. If you're running a
massive three hundred and fifty million population democracy, what you

(22:19):
want are people who are qualified to do the position
that they're in. Loyalty to family has nothing to do
with that kind of thing. And that's why some people
say you need nepotises. And because loyalty to family is
still important, you don't take another break. I think we
should m hm. So Chuck I said before the break

(22:58):
that like family, loyalty to family, that's the heart of
nepotism or the basis of nepotism, right, um, and family
is very much associated with nepotism. And the family is
if you look at the world and humanity from a
sociological perspective, that is the smallest unit of community. Yes,

(23:18):
there's the individual, but the individual doesn't represent a community.
A family represents a community. And so basically, throughout history,
throughout time all over the world, the family has been
the basic unit of society. And then it just kind
of builds from there, Right, Yeah, you got your family,
and then many families forms your tribe. Your tribe forms

(23:40):
your community, and then outward until you have you know, cities, counties, states, nations, right,
and it just gets more sophisticated from there. But you
can reduce all of it, which is very reductive, back
to the family, the basic unit. And I think that's
one reason why cults are so unpower suitable for so
many people who are in cult because one of the

(24:03):
main characteristics of cults is that they break apart families.
The family unit does not exist in the cult. The
cult itself is one big family, so that these natural
family units have been broken into their constituent pieces and
reformed into part of this larger hole, which I think
strikes some people is highly unnatural and like a really

(24:24):
visceral way. Are you watching or have you watched World
Country yet? Is it good? God? Is it good? It's bananas?
I gotta see it. I mean bananas? Is it straight
up documentary, straight up documentary. And I had never heard
of this stuff. We're talking about Wild Wild Country on Netflix,
the six part documentary series. But you know, I won't

(24:45):
I won't get into it. But it's um and I
had never heard of it, and it was such a
big thing. I wondered how I never heard of it
because it wasn't like you know, the Source family and
father Yad. I mean, it was half a million people
around in the world. It's bananas. That is bananas. I
gotta check it out. So I've been watching Black Mirror

(25:05):
lately and I haven't seen the new season yet. I've
never seen it before in my life until like two
days ago, and I'm like, where if you're been in
Black Mirror, yeah, it'll put you in a dark frame
of mind, though I'm usually You're like, it's kind of
been lighting me up. I actually it's true. I've been
working on Existential Risks, which has been like in the
gutter right now, so it kind of is that. I'm like, well,

(25:29):
this is kind of funny. That's funny. Actually, I saw
the episode San Junipero. Did you see that one? I
don't remember the names, but one where like it's in
the afterlife and the women like basically find each other
in the end of their life and they get to
um go spend e trinity together having fun. It was
really sweet. Yeah, that one was. That one was good.
It's like twilight Zone every now and then had a

(25:51):
heartwarming episode, right. But I didn't realize that Black Mirror
was our twilight Zone. No one told me, what do
you think it was? I don't know what I thought
it was, but I didn't get it in that sense.
And once I did, I'm like, give me all this
that you got. I want it all. It's pretty cool
all it wants. So Confucius says, uh, And this one

(26:12):
I didn't fully get. I think Ed's talking about the
tensions throughout history between family loyalty and loyalty to the
state and how that played out in China, because Confucianism
talks a lot about family loyalty. Um. But then Communist China, uh,
Like Confucianism says, nepotism can be a good thing, right,

(26:35):
But in communist China that was all about meritocracy. Is
that correct? But then the meritocracy got so uh powerful
that people had a tremendous amount of unchecked power and
they ended up just resorting to nepotism. Okay, that sort
of makes sense. Sound so I think what I was saying, Um,

(26:56):
I had trouble with that too. It took me a
few times. I think what he was saying is that
is a great encapsulation of just the you know those
desktop executive balls that could click click back and forth.
On one end, you got nepotism. On the other end,
you've got meritocracy, and they're just constantly going back and forth,
and every once in a while you get a good
mix right in the middle, and when all the balls

(27:18):
are settled, you get a nice mix of nepotism and meritocracy.
But then when one ball is in the air and
one side of the other, you've got too much and
the system inevitably shifts towards the other direction. That's what
I think it is. Yeah, And it seems like too
when he's talking about the Roman Empire and stuff like,
eventually it's gonna bite you in the butt if you
just keep it's almost incestual, and sometimes it literally was.

(27:41):
But if you keep promoting your own family, you're gonna
eventually promote the dufus, who has no idea how to
run an empire cousin ken Yeah, ken Kin's in there
destroying the Roman Empire from within because he's a moron. So, um,
if you get enough cut and Kens throughout your empire,

(28:02):
the empire collapses because you you need people who know
what they're doing. And I think that's one reason why
so many people are just totally up in arms about
the idea of Jared Kushner having such like a first
rate job in the White House is they're like, oh God,
the whole the whole two fifty year old experiments about
to collapse because of this guy. That's probably not gonna happen,

(28:26):
but the the these people recognize that the system is fragile,
it's not made to steal. And if you do that
enough times, if that becomes the system, then the system
does collapse. It's probably not going to collapse just on
that first person, but it can given enough time and
if it spreads out enough. And I think that's what
people are really upset and scared about. Yeah, and you

(28:49):
know who thinks the whole idea that nepotism is a
bad thing. It's hysterical the monarchy, right, Like, what are
you talking about? That's what it's all about. Yeah, we
have a whole system him very detailed system as to
who has assigned the throne in the lineage. So uh,
you know, get out of my face with that stuff. Yeah,

(29:09):
there was a system of primo janitor, which is the
first the first born son was the one who inherited everything. Uh,
you had entitlements like the title of the father passed
down to the son as well as part of the estate.
Estates were passed down intact, they went from the father
to the son. The state didn't have anything to say
about na give me some of that. And if you

(29:31):
listen to our trickle down Economics episode, you know that
josh and Omics frowns on that kind of thing um.
And one of the one of the main points of
the American the founding of America was too to get
away from that, to break up like in the colonies.
They're like some of those landed estates in Great Britain

(29:54):
had made their way over to America. And one of
the reasons why there's such a thing as a tax
and the idea that the that your estate could be
taxed and that there was no such thing as titles anymore,
it was to get away from nepotism that was so
rampant and that the UK had been built on. Yeah,
I mean Thomas Jefferson, he was one of the main
dudes who kind of pushed for that, right, Yeah, saying

(30:17):
let's break up these huge land estates that are just passed.
And that's kind of one of the problems with nepotism
as it can it just sort of feeds that um
feeds that thing that creates the one per cent, which
is uh, anyone of any minority population good luck. Like

(30:37):
you don't have a shot because you don't have the
relatives in those positions to help you out, you're never
gonna get ahead. I read this really really great article
from the Boston Review called the Dream Hoarders, and it
was it was saying, like everybody targets the top one
percent as the people who are like hoarding the American dream.

(30:59):
Actually it's the top that do it, and they do
it through things like nepotism and cronyism. Like, hey, my kid,
it needs an internship, can you can you hook him
up for the summer? And then some kid who's whose
dad isn't friends with the guy who runs the company
doesn't get that and so you perpetuate this, the top

(31:19):
get to kind of get to keep going and become
this elite group. And what Adam Bellows was saying, I
think in this case quite rightly, is that no matter
whether it's a nepotistic one or a meritocratic one, you
have an elite that forms, and that's like this crust

(31:39):
that forms on whatever institution you have, and one breaks
up the other nepotism breaks it up, which I think
is what's going on with the Trump White House right now.
It's breaking up the meritocratic elite. And then eventually the
meritocratic elite will be like, enough of this nepotism, We
need to get that back. But you have an elite
that forms, and that's when the other side pushes in

(32:02):
and breaks it up. Yeah, but it's so like I said,
I think we're all guilty of making that phone call,
being like, you know, my cousin, let me, let me
make a call, let me see what I can do.
Right this Boston reader things said, don't do that. If
you really believe in in merit if you really believe
in the meritocracy, don't do that, Like you are committing

(32:24):
essentially a moral crime against a poor kid. I know, man,
it's really tough to reckon with that as uh uh,
it's really tough to reckon with that because like my
nieces and nephews, I would do anything to try and
help them out. Uh and they are they would earn
it because they are great and smart and it's not

(32:45):
like he's a real screw up. But let me see
if I can make a call. But even if they
are qualified, it's disrupts the system and might keep someone
who doesn't have that opportunity down, and for sure does
and they they Nepotist has been called a form of discrimination,
you know, like if you I would assume that most

(33:05):
of your nieces and nephews are white, right, Okay, Well,
I mean if you have some adopted like people in
the family, it might not be. But for the most part,
when people pick up that phone and make that call,
they're actually helping out their own race, their own ethnic group.
There's certainly their own socioeconomic class, and so it is
a form of discrimination in that sense too. It can also,

(33:26):
and it was for a very long time, a form
of sexism as well, sexist discrimination because um, when whenever
we had anti nepotism laws. It was very frequently in
the form of a no spouse rule, so your spouse
couldn't come work at a company. Well, usually the men
were already in the company, so it kept women out
of the workplace, right. And then there's also you know,

(33:48):
you see examples of I guess what some people would
call positive nepotism or crony ism. Um, Like in the
film business. Let's say when uh uh, let's say that
was a TV show where an African American was running
the show, um, which is a rarity these days, but
they may or like Spike Lee famously did for many years.

(34:09):
You know, I'm gonna hire black crew and give them
an opportunity as much as I can. And a lot
of people would say, well, that's a form of positive
nepotism or cronyism, which is interesting, right, And that's just
a whole other kettle of fish. Sure, right, um, but
it is still a form of cronyism, and it is
still a form of nepotism. I thought this one study
was interesting. Granted it was in the eighties, but that

(34:32):
was a paper that found the child of a doctor
has a fourteen percent greater chance of being admitted in
the medical school than someone whose parents were not doctors.
And that's after they controlled for variables. So that's called
you know, legacy admissions to universities. Things like that, that
all just sort of reinforces that thing of again usually

(34:54):
like um, white people with a little more money, uh,
getting admitted into these universities and into these programs not
based on marriage. And it's so funny too, because there's
so many people who consider themselves like liberal and progressive
and all that, but they wouldn't hesitate to pick up
the phone and support this entrenchment of this this ruling

(35:17):
class or group that there you know, a part of.
And and I mean it's tough like that that tension
you felt over that, over the guilt of doing that
and the guilt of not doing that, That is the
tension between meritocracy and nepotism right there in your heart. Yeah, Like,
I can't imagine my niece if I had an end

(35:37):
to a company or whatever that she was interested in
saying like, I'm sorry, I believe in meritocracy. I'm not
gonna I'm not gonna help you out. You could though
such a hard life lesson you know you could, But yes,
she'd be like, I hate my uncle cuts you ruin
my life, Uncle Chuck. I thought this was interesting too,
is when it comes to businesses. There was a study

(35:59):
that on the companies who promote CEO is based on
family ties perform fourteen percent worse UH in the ensuing years,
which is really interesting. Yeah, but I think that probably
entails a lot of those worst case examples of um
nepotism where it's like you're my son, You're a total

(36:20):
screw up and write all you want to do is
get all oscar wild with it right, But you're going
to be CEO now. Whereas if if it were like
a business owner who said you're going to be CEO
one day, go to school, learn this, go work for
one of our competitors, learn their think, and then you
can come around and you gotta work in this department,
that department, this department, that department. Then eventually, once you've

(36:42):
gained the respect of everybody in the company and all
of our customers, then you'll be ready to take over.
That would probably lead to a good outcome for your company. Well,
and it also points out that a lot of times
the good outcomes come when your company is very idiosyncratic,
if it's very speci cific um knowledge that you need

(37:03):
to run this company. Like if you're a bank that
only does business with goats, that's idiosyncratic. Yeah, if you're
goat bank, for sure, then you might benefit as a
company by handing the reins over to your son or
daughter who uh dealt a lot with with goat got banking,
goat banking. Yeah, you try to find an idiosyncratic business,

(37:28):
you can't find it. Well, I don't know. I think
I was thinking like Cobbler, but sure, goat banking. Yeah,
I guess Cobbler too. You got anything else? I don't
think there is anything else. I think we kind of
covered it mostly nepotism. If you all learn more about it,
you can type that word in the search bar how
stuff works, and they'll bring up this great article by

(37:48):
the Grab store. Uh. And since I said grabs there,
it's time for listener. Now, I'm gonna call this one
answer about paramedics, private paramedics, and boy, a couple of
things here. We really heard from a lot of paramedics,
So I think a lot of those folks are listening
out there while they're driving around. Well, yeah, nothing, and

(38:13):
we really heard from you Utah. We call put a
call out to Utah. Yeah, I mean they got a show.
We heard more from people from Utah than we did
paramedics even and there were a lot of paramedics in
Utah that are listening. So Salt Lake City, we're gonna
work it out for this year sometime. We're it's on
it's on the map, it's on the list, and because

(38:35):
of proximity Phoenix, we're hope we're going to try and
work it out for you because it's a hop, skip
and a jump plane wise from Salt Lake City. Yes,
so you guys win by proxy, that's right. So we're
hoping to do those two cities later in the years,
So stay tuned for that and quit emailing us. All right, Hey, guys,
just want to email you with information about private amilances.

(38:55):
My girlfriend I have almost twenty years of experience in
e m S and she's currently attending paramedic school. There
are two different types of private ambulances uh for profit
and nonprofit. For profit amilances make a majority of their
money from hospital discharges, where they contract with area hospitals
to take patients home or to a rehab facility. Contracts

(39:16):
with nursing homes, transport them to and from dialysis and
medical appointments, and transport to and also from inter facility transfers.
Private ambulance company I work for had a contract with
a rural hospital to transport emergency patients to a larger
hospital with more resources. It's like the feeder hospital. Uh.
Private ambulances can also have contracts with the municipalities to

(39:39):
provide private nine one one services, provide paramedics if the
municipality operates on an e m T level, or to
provide backup to the primary service. What I think that
kind of You'll just listen to it on slow motion.
Later you'll get it. Nonprofit private ambulances can be hospital
based or municipality based, and usually per emergency services. Very

(40:02):
rarely do they do non emergency medical transport. The fire
Department I volunteer on operates a nonprofit ambulance service and
all money made goes back to the operational costs. That's
from Jay Haley. Thanks Jay, Thanks to you and your
girlfriend for twenty years of e m T service Between
you guys, it's great. Um. Did you ever hear the

(40:24):
story about the guy who drove the cab who picked
a woman up and Um found out that he was
driving her to a hospice and was basically took her
on a tour of like her memory lane or something
like that, and drove her around for hours to like
she was like my old house or something like that,
and just basically drove her around for hours, and then

(40:46):
when they found when she was finally ready, took her
to hospice and wouldn't take a dime from her. Yeah,
I think I remember that, and I think I remember
like weeping. Sure, it's a great story. I didn't weep,
but you know that's because you're dead. If you want
again in touch with us to tell us a great story,
we love hearing great stories. You can tweet to us

(41:08):
if it's a very very short story. I'm at Josh
Eum Clark Chuck's that movie Crush, and we're both at
s Y s K podcast. You can join us both
on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know or
Chuck at Facebook dot com slash Charles ivery Took Bryant
send us an email the Stuff podcast how Stuff Works
and has always joined us at our home on the
web Stuff you Should Know dot com For more on

(41:34):
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works?
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