> 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.