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Location: We_tside PNW (Columbia Gorge) / CO / SA TX / Thailand
34,705 posts, read 58,042,598 times
Reputation: 46172
ingrown 'local network' is most evident when dealing with properties, businesses (jobs), financing, zoning and planning.
Sometimes school and church leadership.
Don't upset their apple cart... they have lived there for generations and invested in their community to make it desireable (for them, and hopefully others).
In small towns it's very much a thing. In my Texas hometown, all the leadership positions were held by people who went to one of about 3 churches. So if you wanted to be mayor, city council, school board, whatever, you needed to either be a member of those particular churches and in good social standing with the group, or at least well networked with those group.
In recent years some women and even a handful of minorities broke through but were still networked. Still, it's mostly a pretty tight group of white men of a certain age and disposition.
But of course. Though like everything else in life, nuthin's ever free. So what's the 'Cost'... and who 'pays'?
No cost to anyone who wanted to live there and knew how to get along with others. If you think nothing is free you don't know much about friendship, loyalty, kindness, good citizenship and all those other non-tangibles that are valuable beyond reckoning.
Mateo? That's an Hispanic name, isn't it? The town and county is full of Hispanic people now, many of them direct descendants of the people who used to come up from Texas years ago to assist in farming during the season.
It's been pleasing to see them become nurses, teachers, businessmen and to benefit from the hopes that their forefathers had. They knew how to read the promise of hard work in America, just like all the first and second generations of Scandinavians that inhabited that little town. They knew what it was like to be outsiders.
I think people conflate Good Old Boys with Old Boy Network, but there are subtle differences to the meanings, as Old Boy Network is a more general social climber and the phrase could easily apply in Boston while "Good "Ol Boys" are usually referring to cronyism among usually rural, Southern (typically Caucasian) men.
Location: On the "Left Coast", somewhere in "the Land of Fruits & Nuts"
8,852 posts, read 10,455,696 times
Reputation: 6670
Yep, most folks are familiar with the concept, though unfortunately the ingenuous 'but whaddabouts' and 'changing the subject' have now become a popular means of distraction for some... whenever others start asking questions or the topic gets a little too close to 'home'.
It's alive and well in the hinterlands of Vermont, that's for sure. You have the dichotomy of the 'city,' with its Wokesters, and then out in the sticks, men who clearly believe women to be inferior, who would only hire someone they know, or who is a relative, regardless of qualifications, and who think that you should 'trust them' (specifically contractors) because they are local.
Yeah.
No.
Alive a well in North Dakota! Your not getting a job in local government with out being born into certain families. To hell with qualifications or job skills. “Equal opportunity employer” is just words on paper. Same with buying land or earning government contracts. Xenophobia is also alive and well up here in small towns. Just a fact of life.
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