Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland over there,
Speaker 1: and that's the McDonald triad. Stuff you should know, McDonald triad.
Speaker 1: What's that? Really? I'm just wow, you are spacey today.
Speaker 1: We literally talked about it ten minutes ago. Oh that yeah, sorry,
Speaker 1: you know bed wedding, fire starting harmony add I was
Speaker 1: thinking of I call fire starting McDonald I call bed wedding,
Speaker 1: all right, Jerry's animal harmor um. Well, we know that's
Speaker 1: not true. I was the first thing I thought it
Speaker 1: was a McDonald's because I am totally spacey today. And
Speaker 1: plus you could probably use the McDonald's right now, I'll
Speaker 1: bet no. Well, I already ate, but if I hadn't
Speaker 1: have eaten ramen, I could have totally partied on a
Speaker 1: on a quarter pounder. Quarter pounder, definitely not a big Mac, right,
Speaker 1: I don't do big Max. It's the sauce. It's a
Speaker 1: weirdo sauce. Yeah, I just I don't. I don't do it.
Speaker 1: And you know you don't need another third piece of bread. No,
Speaker 1: it is a great standard of measure, though, isn't it.
Speaker 1: What do you mean big max? You know this is
Speaker 1: ex big max of calories or something. It's a unit
Speaker 1: of measure here in America. I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: had a big Mac in my life. I've had like
Speaker 1: maybe one, maybe two. Yeah, I've pretty much learned my
Speaker 1: lesson the first time. I'm a quarter pounder guy. I
Speaker 1: like quarter pounders. But really there's nothing better than just
Speaker 1: their plain old double cheeseburger. Oh, just their a little smashburger,
Speaker 1: but the double cheeseburger. And there's a difference. They have
Speaker 1: a double cheeseburger and a Mick double. Did you know that?
Speaker 1: From what I can discern, what I can discern, the
Speaker 1: only difference is the double cheeseburger has two slices of cheese.
Speaker 1: The Mick double has one. Everything else is the same.
Speaker 1: Where's the one piece of cheese? Why would you even
Speaker 1: sell it like that? It's weird. It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: You could say, mcdoubell with just one slice of cheese.
Speaker 1: That makes stupid, is what they should say. Like, Yeah,
Speaker 1: pull forward and hang your head in shame, and we'll
Speaker 1: give you your stupid sandwich. I'm gonna go to McDonald's
Speaker 1: in order a McDLT remember those, Oh yeah, the hot
Speaker 1: side right, yeah, and you could like fold the little
Speaker 1: styrofi containing, which I mean it kind of makes sense
Speaker 1: because even though I don't do the big garden on
Speaker 1: the burger anyway, part of the reason I don't is
Speaker 1: because I don't like hot, soggy lettuce. So the mcdealt
Speaker 1: would solve that. It would, But it was really just
Speaker 1: like here's even more styro poem. Yeah, and like, yes,
Speaker 1: it was terrible for the earth, but that was like
Speaker 1: the look of my youth, you know what I'm Yeah, well, no,
Speaker 1: the styrofoam contain everything came in everything, Like their cinnamon
Speaker 1: roll used to come in a styrofoam container, for God's sake. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'd be like, can I have a pack of salt
Speaker 1: and they put it in a styron container. Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: That was got some big McDonald's dollars coming our way. Now.
Speaker 1: So I want to paint a picture for you, Chuck.
Speaker 1: Let's say you owned a McDonald's franchise here in town,
Speaker 1: and uh, you decided that you wanted your your daughter
Speaker 1: to take over the business. Sure, if you just said, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm ready to retire. It's your turn. Now, come on in.
Speaker 1: We'll see you later. Good luck. You would not be
Speaker 1: doing what's known as nepotism, right, you'd be doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: There's a right way to do it in a wrong
Speaker 1: way to do it. Yeah, but either way, what you're
Speaker 1: engaged in is nepotism. Yeah, they say, wait, I've really
Speaker 1: pulled that one out of your butt. Yeah. Um, I
Speaker 1: didn't know if you meant pulled it off or pulled
Speaker 1: it out of your butt. I meant pulled it off.
Speaker 1: You did very well. Nice transition with the Nipotis that's
Speaker 1: all I was looking for? Uh? Yeah, they do say.
Speaker 1: I mean, some experts will say, if you do have
Speaker 1: a family business and you want to have been actually
Speaker 1: hand that over your kids, if if you really want
Speaker 1: to do that the right way, have them work outside
Speaker 1: the or in that industry, maybe for another company for
Speaker 1: a while, gaining some experience outside your own company, because
Speaker 1: it can be very problematic to the other employees when
Speaker 1: that happens, because even if they're qualified, there's a bit
Speaker 1: of a target sometimes on their back. There's Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: unfair to them, it's unfair to the other employees. It
Speaker 1: says a lot about you too. It sends signals, whether
Speaker 1: you mean it or not. It sends signals that you're
Speaker 1: insecure in your leadership and you need to surround yourself
Speaker 1: with people who you know will generally agree with you,
Speaker 1: and even if they don't agree with you, you are
Speaker 1: bringing them in in a position where they really owe
Speaker 1: you a favor. There's a lot of opportunity for people
Speaker 1: to be like, this person is not even qualified for
Speaker 1: this position. I'm more qualified. I'm just not their son
Speaker 1: or daughter. This is b s. And then it also
Speaker 1: has a real chilling effect on morale around the company too,
Speaker 1: where it's like, no matter what I do or how
Speaker 1: good I am, um, I'm never going to get ahead
Speaker 1: because this this employer, this boss is into nepotism and
Speaker 1: I'm not related to him, so I might as well
Speaker 1: just quit or go somewhere else or milk the clock. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this. This can go take so many forms,
Speaker 1: like it is a time honored tradition to start a
Speaker 1: small family business to pass along to your children, Like
Speaker 1: there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But then there's also
Speaker 1: the scenario where you know mom and dad start a
Speaker 1: business and the sons of gambling and and living up,
Speaker 1: tripping the lights, fantastic, painting the town brown. Yeah, basically
Speaker 1: acting like Oscar Wilde or something. Yeah. Uh, and then
Speaker 1: it's just handed the keys to the kingdom and they
Speaker 1: run it into the ground. But that that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a saying. The first generation starts the business, the
Speaker 1: second generation carries on the business, the third generation ruins
Speaker 1: the business. We grow the seed beasts nature, No, we
Speaker 1: plant the seed. Nature grows the seed. She sowed the seed.
Speaker 1: What did you just make that up? I think that
Speaker 1: was It sounds like a hippie T shirt the Young
Speaker 1: Ones with like Coco pellion it or something. If I
Speaker 1: would have done it in my Young Ones accent, you
Speaker 1: probably would have. Did you watch that The Young Yeah,
Speaker 1: the British TV show that. How is that on The
Speaker 1: Young Ones? Uh? What that's saying? Was it like a
Speaker 1: recurring thing or no? I think it was just in
Speaker 1: one episode. It just stands out to me, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess I love the Young Ones. I haven't seen that
Speaker 1: in a while. I'm sure they're like eight people that
Speaker 1: heard that were like, oh my god, Young Ones. So
Speaker 1: there is a there is a right way to do nepotism.
Speaker 1: But for the most part, especially in America, especially in
Speaker 1: modern Western society, nepotism is largely frowned upon by the
Speaker 1: general population. But like you said, it's it's time honored,
Speaker 1: it's age old. And there's this great article that we're
Speaker 1: working from um by the Grabst who basically says, like
Speaker 1: you can make the case that nepotism is what civilization
Speaker 1: was originally built on. That that's that really what you're seeing.
Speaker 1: This disregard or this dislike or disdain for nepotism is
Speaker 1: actually a tension between a meritocracy and nepotism, which are
Speaker 1: essentially to opposite socio political sides of the same coin. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it's interesting too. I had no idea that in
Speaker 1: the animal uh, in in biology and the Animal Kingdom,
Speaker 1: that they actually refer to animal behaviors as like things
Speaker 1: like natural selection is nepotism. Yeah, like kin selection, where
Speaker 1: you will go out of the great podcast that we did,
Speaker 1: I could remember if we actually did it or not.
Speaker 1: We did huh, we did it, we did it. But
Speaker 1: they will talk about in the Animal Kingdom things like, um,
Speaker 1: like a squirrel is more likely let's to give a
Speaker 1: warning call like a cock or a whatever a squirrel does.
Speaker 1: That was a squirrel, okay, Um, to give a warning
Speaker 1: call of a of a predator approaching if they're near
Speaker 1: family members, and if there are no family members around,
Speaker 1: they're kind of like, what else, good luck, which proves
Speaker 1: your point that squirrels are jerks seeing hell Todd and
Speaker 1: they only can they only think about their own family wise.
Speaker 1: But that is what if you're a wildlife biologist, you
Speaker 1: would call that nepotism. Yeah, okay, so there is a this,
Speaker 1: there's actually an equation for it. Yeah, take it away, Okay,
Speaker 1: because I looked at that you're talking about the Hamilton's rule. Yes,
Speaker 1: but I got you know, my eyes kind of glazed over.
Speaker 1: It's tough. Hopefully we won't go down a false positives
Speaker 1: rabbit hole, yeah, like we did in that episode. But
Speaker 1: there's this guy, Mr Hamilton's. Dr Hamilton's to us, there's
Speaker 1: a million things he hasn't done, and uh, what his
Speaker 1: name was, William D. Hamiltons. This is from the sixties.
Speaker 1: This struck me as it would like it would have
Speaker 1: been old. But whatever, he's a technocratic biologist and he
Speaker 1: basically said there there is a formula for calculating why
Speaker 1: an animal would do something that seems altruistic, and it
Speaker 1: has to do with nepotism or kin selection. And this
Speaker 1: equation is our times B is greater than C done.
Speaker 1: Okay to stop there. Did we talk about this and
Speaker 1: kin selection? We had to it, but I don't think so, man,
Speaker 1: it does not. I think we talked about it without
Speaker 1: ever saying the name of it, and the formula itself
Speaker 1: danced around it. Basically, So just real quick, are is
Speaker 1: the genetic related nous of the the person doing the
Speaker 1: altruistic act and the person benefiting B is the benefit
Speaker 1: of it? And then that has to be so multiply
Speaker 1: those two things, and that would be has to be
Speaker 1: greater than see which is the cost. So the little
Speaker 1: worker bees and the worker ants that know, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: never gonna rise to the top here, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: bust my butt for the queen because everyone else will
Speaker 1: benefit from it. So that so for each worker be
Speaker 1: the cost to be one. They're one, they're going to die,
Speaker 1: they're not going to be able to reproduce and pass
Speaker 1: on jeans. But they're related to the queens, say by
Speaker 1: sharing fifty of their genes, and the queen is going
Speaker 1: to go on and make ten thousand new bees. So
Speaker 1: you've got ten thousand times point five is the left
Speaker 1: hand of the equation, and that is way way greater
Speaker 1: than cost, which is one. So therefore Hamilton's rule would
Speaker 1: apply in that circumstance. It seems dumb to me. I
Speaker 1: think that there's way more going on in life than that.
Speaker 1: I don't think you can boil animal behavior down to
Speaker 1: a formula, especially such a simple formula. I mean, sigma
Speaker 1: doesn't even appear in this formula. It's that simple. We
Speaker 1: can read this formula. It's that simple. Yeah, I almost
Speaker 1: got it. It's that simple. So I think it's reductive.
Speaker 1: I think, is what I'm trying to say, which is
Speaker 1: alert a word I just picked up recently. You've been
Speaker 1: thrown it around a lot. I've heard it before, but
Speaker 1: it's really kind of made sense to me lately. So
Speaker 1: I think that it's a reductive formula, and I uh
Speaker 1: dismay the the use of it. All right. Uh, This
Speaker 1: I found super interesting is the origins of the word itself.
Speaker 1: Sometimes word origins are kind of cool, like this, Well,
Speaker 1: you're big time into it. Aren't you. Yeah, when it
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it'll lit'll light my fire, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like the McDonald triad, but it has
Speaker 1: the Latin root nepos an ep o s which means nephew.
Speaker 1: And this came about because of Catholic priests, who, as
Speaker 1: everyone knows, aren't supposed to make sex, so they don't
Speaker 1: not always, okay, sometimes they do, and sometimes they have children,
Speaker 1: and in order to promote their uns h without without
Speaker 1: having to say yeah, like my son exactly, they would
Speaker 1: call them their nephew. And that's where it actually, that's
Speaker 1: where the root nepos means nephew. That's where it comes from. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere, I think in Adam So you know
Speaker 1: Saul Bellows, the writer, Yeah, yeah, his son Adam wrote
Speaker 1: very very long article in the Atlantic in the early
Speaker 1: two thousand's arguing in favor of nepotism, I think unsuccessfully,
Speaker 1: but I think he said one of the remaining definitions
Speaker 1: of nephew is an illegitimate son of a Catholic priest.
Speaker 1: Oh really still today weird? Yeah. And then the three
Speaker 1: types that that the grabster I like to liken it
Speaker 1: to the core Leone family, um, self determined, coercive and opportunistic.
Speaker 1: So self determined being when you take a family job
Speaker 1: a family member offers because it aligns with your own
Speaker 1: career goals, which would be funny, that's a that's pretty ideal,
Speaker 1: sunny Corleon, Oh, I got you. I thought you met Sonny.
Speaker 1: Like coercive nepotism is when you take a job because
Speaker 1: you feel forced into it, which is clearly Michael, Michael. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then opportunistic, which is I don't feel pressured and
Speaker 1: I just take take the job because it's the easiest path,
Speaker 1: which is Fredo through and through. That really works, it
Speaker 1: really does nice job. Interesting, I mean it stood out
Speaker 1: to me like uh, sore thumb. Sure it did not
Speaker 1: stick out like a sore thumb to me. That's really something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: okay about that. You want to take a break, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I might just leave drop your mind, all right,
Speaker 1: see you? M h okay, everybody, I talk Chuck into
Speaker 1: staying for the rest of the episode during the ad break,
Speaker 1: I'm here. So um, you've got the definition of nepotism
Speaker 1: in the biological sense. There's also the sociological sense we
Speaker 1: kind of touched on in um in the workplace. But
Speaker 1: we still have even said what nepotism is, just like
Speaker 1: we do, okay, Well, so nepotism is basically doling out favors,
Speaker 1: typically jobs, by a person in a position of power
Speaker 1: to people who are their relatives. There's another very very
Speaker 1: closely related um thing called crony ism, which is doing
Speaker 1: the same thing but handing it out to people who
Speaker 1: are friends or friends of friends and building a network.
Speaker 1: And whether it's a business or a political institution or whatever,
Speaker 1: where there are favors done, reciprocal favors owed, and you
Speaker 1: had this very dense web that overlays that company or
Speaker 1: that overlays that institution. It makes it very tough for
Speaker 1: outsiders to get into, which is why a nepotism. Nepotism
Speaker 1: is the opposite of a meritocracy. A meritocracy is you
Speaker 1: are good at this job, this job is open, we
Speaker 1: want you to come fill it. Instead with nepotism, you
Speaker 1: say we've got this position open. Um, let's get my
Speaker 1: nephew meaning my illegitimate son in here, because I want
Speaker 1: him to prosper in life in this position will enrich him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really tricky thing because you know, you want
Speaker 1: to do friends and family favors. Uh, but it's a
Speaker 1: slippery slope if they're not qualified. Even if they are,
Speaker 1: it's you know, has it's just has an ugly connotation
Speaker 1: to it. But myself, I would be like, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: want to want to hook up my friends and family
Speaker 1: right and I want to be hooked up right. So
Speaker 1: you kind of you kind of hit it. And it
Speaker 1: seems to me from everybody, And I don't necessarily agree
Speaker 1: with this, but it seems like everybody says it's not
Speaker 1: going anywhere. The best you can hope for is a
Speaker 1: healthy mix, And I guess it seems like a healthy
Speaker 1: mix is the best way to do it, because you
Speaker 1: don't want a pure meritocracy, because what you end up
Speaker 1: with is an institution that has all brains and no heart,
Speaker 1: Whereas if you have the opposite side, the other side
Speaker 1: of the spectrum, pure nepotism, you have lots of heart
Speaker 1: but no brains. So you want a mixture of the two.
Speaker 1: And in one of the places where nepotism has traditionally
Speaker 1: been frowned upon here in the US is in government,
Speaker 1: Like we basically say, you go do whatever you want
Speaker 1: in your own business, run it however you like. Even
Speaker 1: a publicly traded company that started as a family company
Speaker 1: will sometimes still have a family member running the show.
Speaker 1: But with government, we we say no, nobody can do
Speaker 1: anything nepotistic in government. We've said it from the outset,
Speaker 1: and we've also broken that rule from the outside too.
Speaker 1: It's a long standing American tradition to include nepotism and government. Yeah,
Speaker 1: whether or not you're John F. Kennedy and you say, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna make Bobby my attorney general even though he
Speaker 1: has no law experience, or if you're the current would
Speaker 1: you say that was a great Ted Kennedy but not
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy, Or if you know the current president
Speaker 1: giving his his daughter and son in law positions on
Speaker 1: his White House staff, which I thought this was interesting
Speaker 1: them the law um as far as doing that. After
Speaker 1: John F. Kennedy appointed his brother as U S Attorney General,
Speaker 1: there was a law passed federal law saying you cannot
Speaker 1: appoint a family member to an important position. But in
Speaker 1: two thousand and seventeen, the d o J said a
Speaker 1: president can a point a family member to their own
Speaker 1: personal White House staff. But after FOIA documents UH were
Speaker 1: released in two thousand seventeen Freedom of Information Act, we
Speaker 1: learned that since the Nixon administration, you could not even
Speaker 1: a point white House staff, and it's kind of was
Speaker 1: in it was overruled. There was a reversal of this,
Speaker 1: and was it to allow Trump to do that? I
Speaker 1: think it was just a reversal of the pattern, Not
Speaker 1: like they said, Okay, we'll reverse our ruling. There was
Speaker 1: just a history of of the d O J ruling
Speaker 1: against nepotism in White House staff. No, it says the
Speaker 1: January two seventeen ruling was a reversal, Right, a reversal
Speaker 1: of the pattern since Nixon, I think is what they're saying. Oh,
Speaker 1: it says reversal of the policy. So I thought they
Speaker 1: literally changed the rule. So what I saw is that
Speaker 1: the ruling against it is actually counter two the tradition
Speaker 1: of the presidents picking his advisors without any input or
Speaker 1: oversight from Congress. Like the government, the president's advisors are
Speaker 1: supposed to be the president's own picks, and whether it's
Speaker 1: family or not, t s that's the president's own picks.
Speaker 1: That apparently is the way that it's always been. But
Speaker 1: then since Nixon, they started shooting down that idea. Right,
Speaker 1: And the reason we're talking about politics now is because
Speaker 1: it's one of the clearer examples of um how it
Speaker 1: can go wrong. Because the reason nepotism is so harmful
Speaker 1: in politics is because the we're set up in a
Speaker 1: way in this country, in such a way supposedly to
Speaker 1: have a system of checks and balances to where no
Speaker 1: one person is above the law. And obviously, if you
Speaker 1: fill positions with family members, the rule of law and
Speaker 1: the good of the country is has a very good
Speaker 1: chance of coming in second place to protecting your family member. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So one of the one of the explanations I saw
Speaker 1: was that the reason nepotism is bad for democracy is
Speaker 1: when you have people working in a democracy and the
Speaker 1: actual government of the democracy, those people are supposed to
Speaker 1: be defenders of that democracy and loyal to the democracy,
Speaker 1: not loyal to the person in power. Nepotism inverts that
Speaker 1: to where the people who are running the show are
Speaker 1: loyal to the person in power, not the institution. So
Speaker 1: what you're seeing again, right, there is a tension between
Speaker 1: the meritocracy, where you have people who are loyal and
Speaker 1: dedicated to the institution, and nepotism, where you have people
Speaker 1: who are loyal and dedicated to the person empower who's
Speaker 1: doling out the jobs. And the reason that's bad for
Speaker 1: democracy is the people who owe their job to that
Speaker 1: person in a very direct manner, UM may look the
Speaker 1: other way on wrongdoing. They may also not be qualified
Speaker 1: for the jobs, so they may not even be aware
Speaker 1: that there's stuff that they're supposed to be loyal to
Speaker 1: that they're not being loyal to. UM. Like in the tuition,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of pitfalls and prat falls to nepotism
Speaker 1: as a as a general rule of thumb in a presidency. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I know brought it up before, but it still
Speaker 1: makes me laugh every time I think of Jared Kushner
Speaker 1: taking his first tour of the White House after the election,
Speaker 1: when he was meeting all the people and he said,
Speaker 1: everyone's so nice. You know how many of these people
Speaker 1: are staying on They're like nobody they worked for President Obama.
Speaker 1: That's not how this works. And oh is he is
Speaker 1: he like a Democrat? Or was he a Democrat? Originally?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I saw it back in like an
Speaker 1: article from two thousand, fifteen or sixteen, and he said, um,
Speaker 1: he was asked if he would be voting for Hillary
Speaker 1: or for Trump, and he said family first, and they said, well,
Speaker 1: there's pretty good reason why why he was given this
Speaker 1: position of power. He's very loyal to family. Apparently when
Speaker 1: his dad was in jail for tax fraud, he went
Speaker 1: visited him every week. And if you are, if you
Speaker 1: are a candidate for nepotism, you uh, like loyalty to
Speaker 1: family is basically that's your qualification. If you're running a
Speaker 1: massive three hundred and fifty million population democracy, what you
Speaker 1: want are people who are qualified to do the position
Speaker 1: that they're in. Loyalty to family has nothing to do
Speaker 1: with that kind of thing. And that's why some people
Speaker 1: say you need nepotises. And because loyalty to family is
Speaker 1: still important, you don't take another break. I think we
Speaker 1: should m hm. So Chuck I said before the break
Speaker 1: that like family, loyalty to family, that's the heart of
Speaker 1: nepotism or the basis of nepotism, right, um, and family
Speaker 1: is very much associated with nepotism. And the family is
Speaker 1: if you look at the world and humanity from a
Speaker 1: sociological perspective, that is the smallest unit of community. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's the individual, but the individual doesn't represent a community.
Speaker 1: A family represents a community. And so basically, throughout history,
Speaker 1: throughout time all over the world, the family has been
Speaker 1: the basic unit of society. And then it just kind
Speaker 1: of builds from there, Right, Yeah, you got your family,
Speaker 1: and then many families forms your tribe. Your tribe forms
Speaker 1: your community, and then outward until you have you know, cities, counties, states, nations, right,
Speaker 1: and it just gets more sophisticated from there. But you
Speaker 1: can reduce all of it, which is very reductive, back
Speaker 1: to the family, the basic unit. And I think that's
Speaker 1: one reason why cults are so unpower suitable for so
Speaker 1: many people who are in cult because one of the
Speaker 1: main characteristics of cults is that they break apart families.
Speaker 1: The family unit does not exist in the cult. The
Speaker 1: cult itself is one big family, so that these natural
Speaker 1: family units have been broken into their constituent pieces and
Speaker 1: reformed into part of this larger hole, which I think
Speaker 1: strikes some people is highly unnatural and like a really
Speaker 1: visceral way. Are you watching or have you watched World
Speaker 1: Country yet? Is it good? God? Is it good? It's bananas?
Speaker 1: I gotta see it. I mean bananas? Is it straight
Speaker 1: up documentary, straight up documentary. And I had never heard
Speaker 1: of this stuff. We're talking about Wild Wild Country on Netflix,
Speaker 1: the six part documentary series. But you know, I won't
Speaker 1: I won't get into it. But it's um and I
Speaker 1: had never heard of it, and it was such a
Speaker 1: big thing. I wondered how I never heard of it
Speaker 1: because it wasn't like you know, the Source family and
Speaker 1: father Yad. I mean, it was half a million people
Speaker 1: around in the world. It's bananas. That is bananas. I
Speaker 1: gotta check it out. So I've been watching Black Mirror
Speaker 1: lately and I haven't seen the new season yet. I've
Speaker 1: never seen it before in my life until like two
Speaker 1: days ago, and I'm like, where if you're been in
Speaker 1: Black Mirror, yeah, it'll put you in a dark frame
Speaker 1: of mind, though I'm usually You're like, it's kind of
Speaker 1: been lighting me up. I actually it's true. I've been
Speaker 1: working on Existential Risks, which has been like in the
Speaker 1: gutter right now, so it kind of is that. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: this is kind of funny. That's funny. Actually, I saw
Speaker 1: the episode San Junipero. Did you see that one? I
Speaker 1: don't remember the names, but one where like it's in
Speaker 1: the afterlife and the women like basically find each other
Speaker 1: in the end of their life and they get to
Speaker 1: um go spend e trinity together having fun. It was
Speaker 1: really sweet. Yeah, that one was. That one was good.
Speaker 1: It's like twilight Zone every now and then had a
Speaker 1: heartwarming episode, right. But I didn't realize that Black Mirror
Speaker 1: was our twilight Zone. No one told me, what do
Speaker 1: you think it was? I don't know what I thought
Speaker 1: it was, but I didn't get it in that sense.
Speaker 1: And once I did, I'm like, give me all this
Speaker 1: that you got. I want it all. It's pretty cool
Speaker 1: all it wants. So Confucius says, uh, And this one
Speaker 1: I didn't fully get. I think Ed's talking about the
Speaker 1: tensions throughout history between family loyalty and loyalty to the
Speaker 1: state and how that played out in China, because Confucianism
Speaker 1: talks a lot about family loyalty. Um. But then Communist China, uh,
Speaker 1: Like Confucianism says, nepotism can be a good thing, right,
Speaker 1: But in communist China that was all about meritocracy. Is
Speaker 1: that correct? But then the meritocracy got so uh powerful
Speaker 1: that people had a tremendous amount of unchecked power and
Speaker 1: they ended up just resorting to nepotism. Okay, that sort
Speaker 1: of makes sense. Sound so I think what I was saying, Um,
Speaker 1: I had trouble with that too. It took me a
Speaker 1: few times. I think what he was saying is that
Speaker 1: is a great encapsulation of just the you know those
Speaker 1: desktop executive balls that could click click back and forth.
Speaker 1: On one end, you got nepotism. On the other end,
Speaker 1: you've got meritocracy, and they're just constantly going back and forth,
Speaker 1: and every once in a while you get a good
Speaker 1: mix right in the middle, and when all the balls
Speaker 1: are settled, you get a nice mix of nepotism and meritocracy.
Speaker 1: But then when one ball is in the air and
Speaker 1: one side of the other, you've got too much and
Speaker 1: the system inevitably shifts towards the other direction. That's what
Speaker 1: I think it is. Yeah, And it seems like too
Speaker 1: when he's talking about the Roman Empire and stuff like,
Speaker 1: eventually it's gonna bite you in the butt if you
Speaker 1: just keep it's almost incestual, and sometimes it literally was.
Speaker 1: But if you keep promoting your own family, you're gonna
Speaker 1: eventually promote the dufus, who has no idea how to
Speaker 1: run an empire cousin ken Yeah, ken Kin's in there
Speaker 1: destroying the Roman Empire from within because he's a moron. So, um,
Speaker 1: if you get enough cut and Kens throughout your empire,
Speaker 1: the empire collapses because you you need people who know
Speaker 1: what they're doing. And I think that's one reason why
Speaker 1: so many people are just totally up in arms about
Speaker 1: the idea of Jared Kushner having such like a first
Speaker 1: rate job in the White House is they're like, oh God,
Speaker 1: the whole the whole two fifty year old experiments about
Speaker 1: to collapse because of this guy. That's probably not gonna happen,
Speaker 1: but the the these people recognize that the system is fragile,
Speaker 1: it's not made to steal. And if you do that
Speaker 1: enough times, if that becomes the system, then the system
Speaker 1: does collapse. It's probably not going to collapse just on
Speaker 1: that first person, but it can given enough time and
Speaker 1: if it spreads out enough. And I think that's what
Speaker 1: people are really upset and scared about. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know who thinks the whole idea that nepotism is a
Speaker 1: bad thing. It's hysterical the monarchy, right, Like, what are
Speaker 1: you talking about? That's what it's all about. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have a whole system him very detailed system as to
Speaker 1: who has assigned the throne in the lineage. So uh,
Speaker 1: you know, get out of my face with that stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a system of primo janitor, which is the
Speaker 1: first the first born son was the one who inherited everything. Uh,
Speaker 1: you had entitlements like the title of the father passed
Speaker 1: down to the son as well as part of the estate.
Speaker 1: Estates were passed down intact, they went from the father
Speaker 1: to the son. The state didn't have anything to say
Speaker 1: about na give me some of that. And if you
Speaker 1: listen to our trickle down Economics episode, you know that
Speaker 1: josh and Omics frowns on that kind of thing um.
Speaker 1: And one of the one of the main points of
Speaker 1: the American the founding of America was too to get
Speaker 1: away from that, to break up like in the colonies.
Speaker 1: They're like some of those landed estates in Great Britain
Speaker 1: had made their way over to America. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why there's such a thing as a tax
Speaker 1: and the idea that the that your estate could be
Speaker 1: taxed and that there was no such thing as titles anymore,
Speaker 1: it was to get away from nepotism that was so
Speaker 1: rampant and that the UK had been built on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean Thomas Jefferson, he was one of the main
Speaker 1: dudes who kind of pushed for that, right, Yeah, saying
Speaker 1: let's break up these huge land estates that are just passed.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of one of the problems with nepotism
Speaker 1: as it can it just sort of feeds that um
Speaker 1: feeds that thing that creates the one per cent, which
Speaker 1: is uh, anyone of any minority population good luck. Like
Speaker 1: you don't have a shot because you don't have the
Speaker 1: relatives in those positions to help you out, you're never
Speaker 1: gonna get ahead. I read this really really great article
Speaker 1: from the Boston Review called the Dream Hoarders, and it
Speaker 1: was it was saying, like everybody targets the top one
Speaker 1: percent as the people who are like hoarding the American dream.
Speaker 1: Actually it's the top that do it, and they do
Speaker 1: it through things like nepotism and cronyism. Like, hey, my kid,
Speaker 1: it needs an internship, can you can you hook him
Speaker 1: up for the summer? And then some kid who's whose
Speaker 1: dad isn't friends with the guy who runs the company
Speaker 1: doesn't get that and so you perpetuate this, the top
Speaker 1: get to kind of get to keep going and become
Speaker 1: this elite group. And what Adam Bellows was saying, I
Speaker 1: think in this case quite rightly, is that no matter
Speaker 1: whether it's a nepotistic one or a meritocratic one, you
Speaker 1: have an elite that forms, and that's like this crust
Speaker 1: that forms on whatever institution you have, and one breaks
Speaker 1: up the other nepotism breaks it up, which I think
Speaker 1: is what's going on with the Trump White House right now.
Speaker 1: It's breaking up the meritocratic elite. And then eventually the
Speaker 1: meritocratic elite will be like, enough of this nepotism, We
Speaker 1: need to get that back. But you have an elite
Speaker 1: that forms, and that's when the other side pushes in
Speaker 1: and breaks it up. Yeah, but it's so like I said,
Speaker 1: I think we're all guilty of making that phone call,
Speaker 1: being like, you know, my cousin, let me, let me
Speaker 1: make a call, let me see what I can do.
Speaker 1: Right this Boston reader things said, don't do that. If
Speaker 1: you really believe in in merit if you really believe
Speaker 1: in the meritocracy, don't do that, Like you are committing
Speaker 1: essentially a moral crime against a poor kid. I know, man,
Speaker 1: it's really tough to reckon with that as uh uh,
Speaker 1: it's really tough to reckon with that because like my
Speaker 1: nieces and nephews, I would do anything to try and
Speaker 1: help them out. Uh and they are they would earn
Speaker 1: it because they are great and smart and it's not
Speaker 1: like he's a real screw up. But let me see
Speaker 1: if I can make a call. But even if they
Speaker 1: are qualified, it's disrupts the system and might keep someone
Speaker 1: who doesn't have that opportunity down, and for sure does
Speaker 1: and they they Nepotist has been called a form of discrimination,
Speaker 1: you know, like if you I would assume that most
Speaker 1: of your nieces and nephews are white, right, Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean if you have some adopted like people in
Speaker 1: the family, it might not be. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: when people pick up that phone and make that call,
Speaker 1: they're actually helping out their own race, their own ethnic group.
Speaker 1: There's certainly their own socioeconomic class, and so it is
Speaker 1: a form of discrimination in that sense too. It can also,
Speaker 1: and it was for a very long time, a form
Speaker 1: of sexism as well, sexist discrimination because um, when whenever
Speaker 1: we had anti nepotism laws. It was very frequently in
Speaker 1: the form of a no spouse rule, so your spouse
Speaker 1: couldn't come work at a company. Well, usually the men
Speaker 1: were already in the company, so it kept women out
Speaker 1: of the workplace, right. And then there's also you know,
Speaker 1: you see examples of I guess what some people would
Speaker 1: call positive nepotism or crony ism. Um, Like in the
Speaker 1: film business. Let's say when uh uh, let's say that
Speaker 1: was a TV show where an African American was running
Speaker 1: the show, um, which is a rarity these days, but
Speaker 1: they may or like Spike Lee famously did for many years.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm gonna hire black crew and give them
Speaker 1: an opportunity as much as I can. And a lot
Speaker 1: of people would say, well, that's a form of positive
Speaker 1: nepotism or cronyism, which is interesting, right, And that's just
Speaker 1: a whole other kettle of fish. Sure, right, um, but
Speaker 1: it is still a form of cronyism, and it is
Speaker 1: still a form of nepotism. I thought this one study
Speaker 1: was interesting. Granted it was in the eighties, but that
Speaker 1: was a paper that found the child of a doctor
Speaker 1: has a fourteen percent greater chance of being admitted in
Speaker 1: the medical school than someone whose parents were not doctors.
Speaker 1: And that's after they controlled for variables. So that's called
Speaker 1: you know, legacy admissions to universities. Things like that, that
Speaker 1: all just sort of reinforces that thing of again usually
Speaker 1: like um, white people with a little more money, uh,
Speaker 1: getting admitted into these universities and into these programs not
Speaker 1: based on marriage. And it's so funny too, because there's
Speaker 1: so many people who consider themselves like liberal and progressive
Speaker 1: and all that, but they wouldn't hesitate to pick up
Speaker 1: the phone and support this entrenchment of this this ruling
Speaker 1: class or group that there you know, a part of.
Speaker 1: And and I mean it's tough like that that tension
Speaker 1: you felt over that, over the guilt of doing that
Speaker 1: and the guilt of not doing that, That is the
Speaker 1: tension between meritocracy and nepotism right there in your heart. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine my niece if I had an end
Speaker 1: to a company or whatever that she was interested in
Speaker 1: saying like, I'm sorry, I believe in meritocracy. I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna I'm not gonna help you out. You could though
Speaker 1: such a hard life lesson you know you could, But yes,
Speaker 1: she'd be like, I hate my uncle cuts you ruin
Speaker 1: my life, Uncle Chuck. I thought this was interesting too,
Speaker 1: is when it comes to businesses. There was a study
Speaker 1: that on the companies who promote CEO is based on
Speaker 1: family ties perform fourteen percent worse UH in the ensuing years,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting. Yeah, but I think that probably
Speaker 1: entails a lot of those worst case examples of um
Speaker 1: nepotism where it's like you're my son, You're a total
Speaker 1: screw up and write all you want to do is
Speaker 1: get all oscar wild with it right, But you're going
Speaker 1: to be CEO now. Whereas if if it were like
Speaker 1: a business owner who said you're going to be CEO
Speaker 1: one day, go to school, learn this, go work for
Speaker 1: one of our competitors, learn their think, and then you
Speaker 1: can come around and you gotta work in this department,
Speaker 1: that department, this department, that department. Then eventually, once you've
Speaker 1: gained the respect of everybody in the company and all
Speaker 1: of our customers, then you'll be ready to take over.
Speaker 1: That would probably lead to a good outcome for your company. Well,
Speaker 1: and it also points out that a lot of times
Speaker 1: the good outcomes come when your company is very idiosyncratic,
Speaker 1: if it's very speci cific um knowledge that you need
Speaker 1: to run this company. Like if you're a bank that
Speaker 1: only does business with goats, that's idiosyncratic. Yeah, if you're
Speaker 1: goat bank, for sure, then you might benefit as a
Speaker 1: company by handing the reins over to your son or
Speaker 1: daughter who uh dealt a lot with with goat got banking,
Speaker 1: goat banking. Yeah, you try to find an idiosyncratic business,
Speaker 1: you can't find it. Well, I don't know. I think
Speaker 1: I was thinking like Cobbler, but sure, goat banking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess Cobbler too. You got anything else? I don't
Speaker 1: think there is anything else. I think we kind of
Speaker 1: covered it mostly nepotism. If you all learn more about it,
Speaker 1: you can type that word in the search bar how
Speaker 1: stuff works, and they'll bring up this great article by
Speaker 1: the Grab store. Uh. And since I said grabs there,
Speaker 1: it's time for listener. Now, I'm gonna call this one
Speaker 1: answer about paramedics, private paramedics, and boy, a couple of
Speaker 1: things here. We really heard from a lot of paramedics,
Speaker 1: So I think a lot of those folks are listening
Speaker 1: out there while they're driving around. Well, yeah, nothing, and
Speaker 1: we really heard from you Utah. We call put a
Speaker 1: call out to Utah. Yeah, I mean they got a show.
Speaker 1: We heard more from people from Utah than we did
Speaker 1: paramedics even and there were a lot of paramedics in
Speaker 1: Utah that are listening. So Salt Lake City, we're gonna
Speaker 1: work it out for this year sometime. We're it's on
Speaker 1: it's on the map, it's on the list, and because
Speaker 1: of proximity Phoenix, we're hope we're going to try and
Speaker 1: work it out for you because it's a hop, skip
Speaker 1: and a jump plane wise from Salt Lake City. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you guys win by proxy, that's right. So we're
Speaker 1: hoping to do those two cities later in the years,
Speaker 1: So stay tuned for that and quit emailing us. All right, Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: just want to email you with information about private amilances.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend I have almost twenty years of experience in
Speaker 1: e m S and she's currently attending paramedic school. There
Speaker 1: are two different types of private ambulances uh for profit
Speaker 1: and nonprofit. For profit amilances make a majority of their
Speaker 1: money from hospital discharges, where they contract with area hospitals
Speaker 1: to take patients home or to a rehab facility. Contracts
Speaker 1: with nursing homes, transport them to and from dialysis and
Speaker 1: medical appointments, and transport to and also from inter facility transfers.
Speaker 1: Private ambulance company I work for had a contract with
Speaker 1: a rural hospital to transport emergency patients to a larger
Speaker 1: hospital with more resources. It's like the feeder hospital. Uh.
Speaker 1: Private ambulances can also have contracts with the municipalities to
Speaker 1: provide private nine one one services, provide paramedics if the
Speaker 1: municipality operates on an e m T level, or to
Speaker 1: provide backup to the primary service. What I think that
Speaker 1: kind of You'll just listen to it on slow motion.
Speaker 1: Later you'll get it. Nonprofit private ambulances can be hospital
Speaker 1: based or municipality based, and usually per emergency services. Very
Speaker 1: rarely do they do non emergency medical transport. The fire
Speaker 1: Department I volunteer on operates a nonprofit ambulance service and
Speaker 1: all money made goes back to the operational costs. That's
Speaker 1: from Jay Haley. Thanks Jay, Thanks to you and your
Speaker 1: girlfriend for twenty years of e m T service Between
Speaker 1: you guys, it's great. Um. Did you ever hear the
Speaker 1: story about the guy who drove the cab who picked
Speaker 1: a woman up and Um found out that he was
Speaker 1: driving her to a hospice and was basically took her
Speaker 1: on a tour of like her memory lane or something
Speaker 1: like that, and drove her around for hours to like
Speaker 1: she was like my old house or something like that,
Speaker 1: and just basically drove her around for hours, and then
Speaker 1: when they found when she was finally ready, took her
Speaker 1: to hospice and wouldn't take a dime from her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I remember that, and I think I remember
Speaker 1: like weeping. Sure, it's a great story. I didn't weep,
Speaker 1: but you know that's because you're dead. If you want
Speaker 1: again in touch with us to tell us a great story,
Speaker 1: we love hearing great stories. You can tweet to us
Speaker 1: if it's a very very short story. I'm at Josh
Speaker 1: Eum Clark Chuck's that movie Crush, and we're both at
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us both
Speaker 1: on Facebook dot com slash Stuff you Should Know or
Speaker 1: Chuck at Facebook dot com slash Charles ivery Took Bryant
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