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I'm going to sound stupid...but what is the good ol' boy system?
Good ol' boy is traditionally a compliment between middle or upper class white rural southerners. It is like a way of saying a person is from a decent family, is down-to-earth, and has good character. It confers some degree of trust, not afforded to the general public.
Now, traditionally these types of people, middle/upper class rural whites, have for many years formed interwoven social, business, and government networks all over the south. They have, as a group, always "run the show".
So when one "good ol boy" shows some political or business preference to another "good ol' boy" (as they are prone to do), people who are out of the loop call it the "good ol boy network". My point was that this sort of thing is how decisions are made everywhere, it just doesn't go by that particular name in the UK, or Japan, or the tribal Amazon, or on Wall Street. In other words, "it is not what you know, it is who you know."
Good ol' boy is traditionally a compliment between middle or upper class white rural southerners. It is like a way of saying a person is from a decent family, is down-to-earth, and has good character. It confers some degree of trust, not afforded to the general public.
Now, traditionally these types of people, middle/upper class rural whites, have for many years formed interwoven social, business, and government networks all over the south. They have, as a group, always "run the show".
So when one "good ol boy" shows some political or business preference to another "good ol' boy" (as they are prone to do), people who are out of the loop call it the "good ol boy network". My point was that this sort of thing is how decisions are made everywhere, it just doesn't go by that particular name in the UK, or Japan, or the tribal Amazon, or on Wall Street. In other words, "it is not what you know, it is who you know."
In a way it sounds...depressing. But really, there are people like that everywhere. I deal with them almost everyday.
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"48 years in MD, 18 in NC"
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Location: Greenville, NC
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Beaufort county as a whole is seriously Good 'Ol Boy. In a conversion with a deputy sheriff there he made it very clear that the sheriff runs the county and when he talks everybody listens.
There are hundreds on towns in Eastern NC, and I doubt anyone could come up with the ONE that is most prone to this well-worn networking system that is, as has been said, in play everywhere. Try breaking into show business in Los Angeles without some major inroads in their version of the "good old boy" system!
The rural southern form of this very human nature "trusting those you know over those you don't" is often known as the "good old boy" system and has a reputation of being more racist and sexist (and anti-Semitic, homophobic, etc) than networks in other places and industries, but it boils down to very similar issues--you will always, ALWAYS get farther in business or the social scene when you already know someone, especialy someone who themselves are "connected". That is going to be true in ANY town you move into, whether it's Eastern NC, Silicon Valley, or the urban Northeast. If there is anything that makes it "worse" in rural areas, it's because people in general know each other from growing up together, so it's not just a matter of knowing someone through work, but because your grandmother went to kindergarten with their grandmother. However, that again, is a rural trait, not a North Carolina trait. You'd find the same things in rural Wisconsin, Alaska, or Maine.
People tend to be at least a little distrustful of "outsiders", wherever you go, and in rural areas, the borderline is a little more harsh between "known folks" and "strangers". It's nothing new.
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