“Howard Lutnick gives top Cantor Fitzgerald jobs to his sons Brandon and Kyle” is a very clean example of meritocracy.

In a post about possible corruption in the government and finance sector, Paul Campos points to a news article entitled, “Howard Lutnick gives top Cantor Fitzgerald jobs to his sons Brandon and Kyle,” that features an adorable photo of the three Lutnicks standing next to a fashion model.

Campos labels this as, “The Meritocracy!”, and clearly he’s being ironic: his point is that it seems unlikely that these two twenty-somethings are really the people with the most merit needed to run this zillion-dollar company. All things are possible, but it would be an amazing coincidence if, among all the possible financial executives out there, that these two would happen to be the best.

And, sure, I get that.

But now I want to point to my old post on the topic, Meritocracy won’t happen: The problem’s with the “ocracy.”

The short version is that the news item, “Howard Lutnick gives top Cantor Fitzgerald jobs to his sons Brandon and Kyle,” is a very clean example of meritocracy. Lutnick Sr. had the merit (in whatever sense) that took him to the top of the heap, and he used that merit to get jobs for his kids: that’s the “ocracy” part.

If all that merit did was get you top jobs and lots of money, that’s not meritocracy, that’s just merit-based employment and pay. What makes it “meritocracy” that the people with the merit don’t just get nice jobs, they also get to be in charge of everything (”ocracy”). And one thing you do when you’re in charge is take care of your kids!

As Mark Palko discussed over ten years ago, our society seems to have become more tolerant of nepotism. Or maybe the point is that nepotism has always been a thing, but in recent years there’s been more of an effort by rich people and the news media to portray nepotistic hires as having special merit of their own. This is not to say that children of the successful cannot make great contributions themselves—John Quincy Adams comes to mind, also Julian Lennon had that cool song a few decades ago where he sounded just like his dad, so that’s something too. And then there was Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who surpassed his famous father in achievements. And Alexander of Macedon didn’t do so bad either.

Anyway, “meritocracy” implies that the people with merit rule society, and they’ll use their power to help their kids.

Nepo babies aren’t a counterexample to meritocracy, they’re a central part of it.