alt Hacker NewsYou 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.
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Given the age of this piece, where it was common to determine your kids' spouses well before they can conceptualize what marriange is, I can see nepotism being farther down the list of great immoral acts.
But yes, I would argue nepotism is prevalent in nearly all societies.
> 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.