Nepotism: When Hiring the Best Just Won't Do

all right, Jerry's animal harmor um. Well, we know that's not true. I was the first thing I thought it 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, 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

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. 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 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, 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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,

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, 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 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, 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.

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 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 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 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.

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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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, and I might just leave drop your mind, all right,

see you? M h okay, everybody, I talk Chuck into 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, 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, 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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?

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 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 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 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, 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 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 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

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 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

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, 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 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 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, 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, 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 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.

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, 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, 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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

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 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, 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, 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.

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works? Dot com