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Comment by igleria | Hacker News Reader

Why would fighter pilot be as nepo-baby compatible as, dunno, actor/actress? Asking truthfully, I'm not american, not in the military, etc.

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Too many nepo babies and too little state owned movie production in the Gulf?

Also flying modern fighter jets is the kind of fun that's typically very hard to buy with money, so you take the opportunity when available.

A fighter pilot is the modern military equivalent of a medieval knight.

Even the early Roman legions were composed of land owning citizens. Partly because they could afford / knew people they could get equipment from. Also likely because you wanted people in the establishment that you could trust armed and the power that went with it.

I believe the latter was key and democratization of the armed forced was at least one reason the dictators (Julius etc) were able to maintain loyalty of their troops as they eliminated the republic as such. Im not super well read here though.

Higher level, Fukuyamas political order series does a great deep dive into these kinds of topics, really blew my mind, and made many archaic seeming political structures make far more intuitive sense to me afterwards.

I’ll have to give those a read. For others, I’ve linked their wiki pages below:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Origins_of_Political_Order

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_Order_and_Political_...

Yeah once a given senator commanded AND paid the local full time legions for a given region, their loyalty followed.

By that time too the men serving in the legions were increasingly locals and not Roman or even from Italy.

I thought that land ownership was offered as a reward for service?

Later on yes. Early on it was more strict about who could serve.

In those countries (i.e., middle eastern countries) power and wealth is usually more connected to gov't and the military rather than independent industries. If you are a nepo-baby, your opportunities will tend to be more gov't/military than celebrity or corporate.

The Sultan bin Salman was the first Arab, first Muslim, and first Royal in space, on the NASA Challenger flight before its fateful flight. He was a fighter pilot for the Saudi Air Force with 1000's of flight hours.

They wouldn't trust a non-family member with weapons that could decapitate the country's kleptocratic monarchy.

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