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>”human capital was strongly transmitted from parents to children” That doesn’t sound distasteful to me at all. Is that bad? Can we make a distinction between

>”human capital was strongly transmitted from parents to children” That doesn’t sound distasteful to me at all. Is that bad? Can we make a distinction between parents raising their kids and giving them great opportunities, and “nepotism” where people are put in no-show jobs or are wholly incompetent? It seems like the system of “nepotism” the paper describes is not bad at all, but instead is working well since the paper observes that when passing occupation from father to son would be inefficient/lead to bad social outcomes, it happens far less

watwut 2y ago
The article is not about toddlers. It is about adult children.
- potato3732842 2y ago
  You're missing the point. Teaching your skills and strengths to your kid and eventually giving them or helping them (within the bounds of what's acceptable and ethical) get a job they're qualified for is good. This is basically how every mutli generational family business works. Giving an unqualified kid a no-show job or a real job they f-up is nepotism and bad.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - lo_zamoyski 2y ago
    > Teaching your skills and strengths to your kid and eventually giving them or helping them [...] get a job they're qualified for is good. Indeed. If some people are claiming that somehow giving your own child, uh, what shall I say, priority (?) and your full attention, teaching them skills and transmitting wisdom, and getting them opportunities is somehow bad, then sorry, but that's shockingly stupid, evil, and misanthropic. Doing these things basically describes what is more or less a core duty of parenthood. A parent has the obligation to prioritize his own children. The idea that such generational advantage is nepotism screams of envy. Inequality of opportunity is not unfair or wrong. Indeed, one of the purposes of meritocracy is to become better off so that you can give your own kids a better start than you had. It's wonderful to be able to give your kids opportunities that you have access to. I think people are failing to distinguish two things, namely, prioritizing your own kin on the one hand, and on the other, prioritizing kinship favors at the gross expense of the common good. (At least that's the most charitable interpretation. The less charitable one is that the have-nots are just envious and feel entitled. There is no point in discussing anything with such twisted people.) If a baker wants to hire his son, that's perfectly fine and completely his business. He doesn't have to open up the pool to check off some ridiculous meritocracy checkbox. It's his bakery. Of course, if he puts his son in a position of authority that he is grossly unsuited for, well, then he imperils his own business. Oh, well. In a larger organization that's private, there is nothing wrong with hiring your own kid, either. Putting him in a position that he is completely unsuited for threatens the company, of course, and in that sense is simply stupid. It can also be argued that the company is harming the common good of the company. Private ownership doesn't mean you don't have certain moral obligations toward your employees. Good leadership is one such obligation, and putting an incompetent child in a position that harms the company is a failure of leadership.
swatcoder 2y ago
We currently live in a society that valorizes meritocracy and equal opportunity and also providing for one's descendants. It supposes that you're you should have equal opportunity to enjoy a middle class or greater lifestyle if you're not a total mess, and that your success is something you can provide to your children as a leg up. Not every society struggles/struggled so poignantly with the contradiction between those things as we now do, but we do, and that's where the modern criticism of nepotism originates. Teaching your children your trade by inviting them into your workshop or boardroom is sensible, but it inevitably means that there's less room in that workshop or boardroom for the scrappy, bright outsider whose supposed to have a fair chance. There's not really one right answer under that kind of tension, so there's no surprise when criticism is levied in either direction.
- adamc 2y ago
  Well... the "right answer" is going to be subjective. But I think parents providing for their children is going to win out 1000 times out of 1000. It's got human psychology and biology behind it. If doing what is "right" means I have to hamstring my kid's chances, then I'm going to pass on "right" (or, more likely, re-orient my thinking to make it not "right") and help my kid.
  - staunton 2y ago
    You seem to be claiming that nepotism is good and that it is prevalent in all societies. Surely I misunderstood? Most societies do demand that workers for important roles be selected on merit or based on other criteria known to all participants, and not based on some individual's wish to care for their family or friends. This is without anyone thinking of such a wish as illegitimate. However , acting on it is still nepotism and societies impose this prohibition on its members because it benefits all. In this sense, "parents providing for their children" is "losing out" in certain important domains all around the world.
    - swatcoder 2y ago
      > Most societies do demand that workers for important roles be selected on merit or based on other criteria known to all participants Most societies become pretty practical after a while, and strive for people to be reliable and adequate for the roles they're appointed to play and celebrate the occasional master of some craft or pursuit. Being groomed for an opportunity from childhood, under the attention of one's family, often delivers on those and so a lot of societies don't worry about it except when it's obvious that somebody completely incompetent has ended up responsible for some influential or essential role. It's actually a very peculiar modern experiment to expect every role to somehow be filled by the most capable person and for every person to be appointed a role that they're personally passionate about. Maybe it'll give us some amazing Star Trek utopia someday, but you don't see that idea expressed very much in history and so we don't really have reason to know what will happen if we try to make it so.
novakboskov 2y ago
Nah, we can't. We can't redefine words to make us feel better. According to Cambridge Dictionary, nepotism is "the act of using your power or influence to get good jobs or unfair advantages for members of your own family." As soon as you favored your kid, it's nepotism, and it's bad. It undermines meritocracy and contributes to an unjust society. It's pretty straightforward to understand.
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago
  Define unfair.
  - octopoc 2y ago
    If there is someone better suited that could have had the position, then it’s unfair.
    - chongli 2y ago
      Doesn't that just reward the children of families who can pay for private tutoring and other resources that give them an advantage over the competition?
      - devilbunny 2y ago
        As someone who has been a private tutor, the only advantage most kids got was that they passed the class badly instead of failing it. They were not standouts. The kids who are standouts - and I was one of them, which is why I was so recommended - need guidance sometimes, but largely get it on their own (and especially when they have to teach their fellow students - if you can't explain it, you don't really know it). I tutored a few smart students who were just weak in one area and needed to reinforce their basic understanding, but most of them just didn't care about wasting time and money, because it was my time and parents' money. I needed the cash, though. I never lied to parents about potential and I really tried to help. But there's only so much you can do when an ADHD kid won't attend to the lessons, or has some issues with their parents. One of the things that modern life has messed up is the idea that you should always be happy. No, sometimes you just have to accept that what you are doing sucks, that you will have to power through it, and that's life.
MisterBastahrd 2y ago
No, we can't, because it rarely ever works out that way. I've yet to work at a family owned company where the children were anywhere near as competent as their parents, and I've worked at multigenerational companies, so imagine that. The one I spent the most time with was a publisher whose founders were Tulane educated intellectuals who walked the walk and talked the talk. The next generation sounded like they fell off an alligator tour air boat with the intellect to match. Their children are the dumbest group of human beings I've ever seen graduate from high school. Utterly and completely useless for anything other than getting hammered on the weekends and keeping random desk chairs from rolling away. Yet they were guaranteed jobs, even as the company's numbers continued to dwindle and they continued to use far more resources than they contributed. No Christmas bonus? That's because they needed to pay these morons enough to live in the same neighborhood as their father, meaning that they needed to make about 80% more than anyone else in their roles. Ownership is not leadership. Leadership takes a set of skills that many people don't possess, and it's less common with the children of the well-off.
- hammock 2y ago
  That is likely to be true if we take a limited firm-centric view (the local shop will never be the best it can be if the next guy has to be the first son of the last guy). But having a multigenerational shop and shopkeeper, or farms and farmers, may be better for the larger community than a Walmart headquartered in another country or a commercial farm that couldn't give two shits about the locals. Not saying it is better, but in some cases it probably is. Certainly could be in some cases
pdimitar 2y ago
> Can we make a distinction between parents raising their kids and giving them great opportunities, and “nepotism” where people are put in no-show jobs or are wholly incompetent? That difference is only on paper, purely academical. In reality, almost all the time, this quickly morphs into pushing your kin into positions of power where they make a mess but you still tolerate them because supposedly they are at least somewhat predictable and you don't want to invest the time and effort to build trust with a stranger. (Or whatever their actual motivation is -- to me it remains mostly a mystery.)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
netcan 2y ago
Honestly, I think "nepotism" and "occupational persistence" are more about how we feel or judge the phenomenon, and what are prior expectations are. If sons and nephews are bad managers and a business suffers... that's nepotism. If they're good managers and the business succeeds, that's a family business. if the local authorities hire family... that's nepotism, because we have an expectation that it should be done differently. A lot of words are like this. Positive and negative words with positive or negative associations that we use to describe the same thing... depending on the association we want to emphasize. But once homo retcom has words... we think in those words. So, we think of nepotism (for example) as this distinct thing, and expect this nuanced definition to account for the negative or positive aspects. This paper is basically a formalization of that process.
SoftTalker 2y ago
I think it's fine in a true "family business" e.g. you wholly own a hardware store or a restaurant and you have your family working there and eventually you hand it off to your children (assuming they want it). In large public companies or institutions that have shareholders or state owners then it's unfair for an executive or senior administrator to carve out a job for a family member. He's giving them something he doesn't own, unlike in the family business example.
- fooker 2y ago
  What fraction of ownership would make it okay? 100% ? 50% ? Something in the middle?
  - cynicalsecurity 2y ago
    50% + 1 share.
- meindnoch 2y ago
  Shareholders can put pressure on the board to fire the exrcutive. If they don't, that means they're fine with the situation.
  - axus 2y ago
    As a shareholder in many companies, I cannot put pressure on a board, and I'm mostly unaware of how they are internally managed.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    Shareholders are basically fine with fraud as long a they benefit in the end .
- esperent 2y ago
  Even in the family business, there should be limits. What if the family business becomesand empire worth >20% of a contries GDP - e.g. Samsung. It is absolutely not reasonable to pass this amount of wealth to children of the founder.
73kl4453dz 2y ago
It seems to me that academia grew out of the church doctors who grew out of the knighthood: thé eldest son of an aristocrat would inherit the land without lifting a finger, but to earn their spurs they needed to convince existing knights they were capable of doing equivalent work in the field. So, out of major feudal institutions, it was among the least nepotist.

watwut 2y ago

The article is not about toddlers. It is about adult children.

potato3732842 2y ago
You're missing the point. Teaching your skills and strengths to your kid and eventually giving them or helping them (within the bounds of what's acceptable and ethical) get a job they're qualified for is good. This is basically how every mutli generational family business works. Giving an unqualified kid a no-show job or a real job they f-up is nepotism and bad.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- lo_zamoyski 2y ago
  > Teaching your skills and strengths to your kid and eventually giving them or helping them [...] get a job they're qualified for is good. Indeed. If some people are claiming that somehow giving your own child, uh, what shall I say, priority (?) and your full attention, teaching them skills and transmitting wisdom, and getting them opportunities is somehow bad, then sorry, but that's shockingly stupid, evil, and misanthropic. Doing these things basically describes what is more or less a core duty of parenthood. A parent has the obligation to prioritize his own children. The idea that such generational advantage is nepotism screams of envy. Inequality of opportunity is not unfair or wrong. Indeed, one of the purposes of meritocracy is to become better off so that you can give your own kids a better start than you had. It's wonderful to be able to give your kids opportunities that you have access to. I think people are failing to distinguish two things, namely, prioritizing your own kin on the one hand, and on the other, prioritizing kinship favors at the gross expense of the common good. (At least that's the most charitable interpretation. The less charitable one is that the have-nots are just envious and feel entitled. There is no point in discussing anything with such twisted people.) If a baker wants to hire his son, that's perfectly fine and completely his business. He doesn't have to open up the pool to check off some ridiculous meritocracy checkbox. It's his bakery. Of course, if he puts his son in a position of authority that he is grossly unsuited for, well, then he imperils his own business. Oh, well. In a larger organization that's private, there is nothing wrong with hiring your own kid, either. Putting him in a position that he is completely unsuited for threatens the company, of course, and in that sense is simply stupid. It can also be argued that the company is harming the common good of the company. Private ownership doesn't mean you don't have certain moral obligations toward your employees. Good leadership is one such obligation, and putting an incompetent child in a position that harms the company is a failure of leadership.

swatcoder 2y ago

We currently live in a society that valorizes meritocracy and equal opportunity and also providing for one's descendants. It supposes that you're you should have equal opportunity to enjoy a middle class or greater lifestyle if you're not a total mess, and that your success is something you can provide to your children as a leg up. Not every society struggles/struggled so poignantly with the contradiction between those things as we now do, but we do, and that's where the modern criticism of nepotism originates. Teaching your children your trade by inviting them into your workshop or boardroom is sensible, but it inevitably means that there's less room in that workshop or boardroom for the scrappy, bright outsider whose supposed to have a fair chance. There's not really one right answer under that kind of tension, so there's no surprise when criticism is levied in either direction.

adamc 2y ago
Well... the "right answer" is going to be subjective. But I think parents providing for their children is going to win out 1000 times out of 1000. It's got human psychology and biology behind it. If doing what is "right" means I have to hamstring my kid's chances, then I'm going to pass on "right" (or, more likely, re-orient my thinking to make it not "right") and help my kid.
- staunton 2y ago
  You seem to be claiming that nepotism is good and that it is prevalent in all societies. Surely I misunderstood? Most societies do demand that workers for important roles be selected on merit or based on other criteria known to all participants, and not based on some individual's wish to care for their family or friends. This is without anyone thinking of such a wish as illegitimate. However , acting on it is still nepotism and societies impose this prohibition on its members because it benefits all. In this sense, "parents providing for their children" is "losing out" in certain important domains all around the world.
  - swatcoder 2y ago
    > Most societies do demand that workers for important roles be selected on merit or based on other criteria known to all participants Most societies become pretty practical after a while, and strive for people to be reliable and adequate for the roles they're appointed to play and celebrate the occasional master of some craft or pursuit. Being groomed for an opportunity from childhood, under the attention of one's family, often delivers on those and so a lot of societies don't worry about it except when it's obvious that somebody completely incompetent has ended up responsible for some influential or essential role. It's actually a very peculiar modern experiment to expect every role to somehow be filled by the most capable person and for every person to be appointed a role that they're personally passionate about. Maybe it'll give us some amazing Star Trek utopia someday, but you don't see that idea expressed very much in history and so we don't really have reason to know what will happen if we try to make it so.

novakboskov 2y ago

Nah, we can't. We can't redefine words to make us feel better. According to Cambridge Dictionary, nepotism is "the act of using your power or influence to get good jobs or unfair advantages for members of your own family." As soon as you favored your kid, it's nepotism, and it's bad. It undermines meritocracy and contributes to an unjust society. It's pretty straightforward to understand.

cynicalsecurity 2y ago
Define unfair.
- octopoc 2y ago
  If there is someone better suited that could have had the position, then it’s unfair.
  - chongli 2y ago
    Doesn't that just reward the children of families who can pay for private tutoring and other resources that give them an advantage over the competition?
    - devilbunny 2y ago
      As someone who has been a private tutor, the only advantage most kids got was that they passed the class badly instead of failing it. They were not standouts. The kids who are standouts - and I was one of them, which is why I was so recommended - need guidance sometimes, but largely get it on their own (and especially when they have to teach their fellow students - if you can't explain it, you don't really know it). I tutored a few smart students who were just weak in one area and needed to reinforce their basic understanding, but most of them just didn't care about wasting time and money, because it was my time and parents' money. I needed the cash, though. I never lied to parents about potential and I really tried to help. But there's only so much you can do when an ADHD kid won't attend to the lessons, or has some issues with their parents. One of the things that modern life has messed up is the idea that you should always be happy. No, sometimes you just have to accept that what you are doing sucks, that you will have to power through it, and that's life.

MisterBastahrd 2y ago

No, we can't, because it rarely ever works out that way. I've yet to work at a family owned company where the children were anywhere near as competent as their parents, and I've worked at multigenerational companies, so imagine that. The one I spent the most time with was a publisher whose founders were Tulane educated intellectuals who walked the walk and talked the talk. The next generation sounded like they fell off an alligator tour air boat with the intellect to match. Their children are the dumbest group of human beings I've ever seen graduate from high school. Utterly and completely useless for anything other than getting hammered on the weekends and keeping random desk chairs from rolling away. Yet they were guaranteed jobs, even as the company's numbers continued to dwindle and they continued to use far more resources than they contributed. No Christmas bonus? That's because they needed to pay these morons enough to live in the same neighborhood as their father, meaning that they needed to make about 80% more than anyone else in their roles. Ownership is not leadership. Leadership takes a set of skills that many people don't possess, and it's less common with the children of the well-off.

hammock 2y ago
That is likely to be true if we take a limited firm-centric view (the local shop will never be the best it can be if the next guy has to be the first son of the last guy). But having a multigenerational shop and shopkeeper, or farms and farmers, may be better for the larger community than a Walmart headquartered in another country or a commercial farm that couldn't give two shits about the locals. Not saying it is better, but in some cases it probably is. Certainly could be in some cases

pdimitar 2y ago

> Can we make a distinction between parents raising their kids and giving them great opportunities, and “nepotism” where people are put in no-show jobs or are wholly incompetent? That difference is only on paper, purely academical. In reality, almost all the time, this quickly morphs into pushing your kin into positions of power where they make a mess but you still tolerate them because supposedly they are at least somewhat predictable and you don't want to invest the time and effort to build trust with a stranger. (Or whatever their actual motivation is -- to me it remains mostly a mystery.)

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

netcan 2y ago

Honestly, I think "nepotism" and "occupational persistence" are more about how we feel or judge the phenomenon, and what are prior expectations are. If sons and nephews are bad managers and a business suffers... that's nepotism. If they're good managers and the business succeeds, that's a family business. if the local authorities hire family... that's nepotism, because we have an expectation that it should be done differently. A lot of words are like this. Positive and negative words with positive or negative associations that we use to describe the same thing... depending on the association we want to emphasize. But once homo retcom has words... we think in those words. So, we think of nepotism (for example) as this distinct thing, and expect this nuanced definition to account for the negative or positive aspects. This paper is basically a formalization of that process.

SoftTalker 2y ago

I think it's fine in a true "family business" e.g. you wholly own a hardware store or a restaurant and you have your family working there and eventually you hand it off to your children (assuming they want it). In large public companies or institutions that have shareholders or state owners then it's unfair for an executive or senior administrator to carve out a job for a family member. He's giving them something he doesn't own, unlike in the family business example.

fooker 2y ago
What fraction of ownership would make it okay? 100% ? 50% ? Something in the middle?
- cynicalsecurity 2y ago
  50% + 1 share.
meindnoch 2y ago
Shareholders can put pressure on the board to fire the exrcutive. If they don't, that means they're fine with the situation.
- axus 2y ago
  As a shareholder in many companies, I cannot put pressure on a board, and I'm mostly unaware of how they are internally managed.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Shareholders are basically fine with fraud as long a they benefit in the end .
esperent 2y ago
Even in the family business, there should be limits. What if the family business becomesand empire worth >20% of a contries GDP - e.g. Samsung. It is absolutely not reasonable to pass this amount of wealth to children of the founder.

73kl4453dz 2y ago

It seems to me that academia grew out of the church doctors who grew out of the knighthood: thé eldest son of an aristocrat would inherit the land without lifting a finger, but to earn their spurs they needed to convince existing knights they were capable of doing equivalent work in the field. So, out of major feudal institutions, it was among the least nepotist.