[qwddysko] Posh jobs of trust

The best jobs out there require no education, no special skills or training, and don't require you to do anything.  This seems too good to be true.  What's the catch?

The catch is, they require you NOT to do things, in particular, not to abuse the power or authority the position grants you.  You have been hired not for your skills but because the employer trusts you.

Two extremes: Baby sitter.  Emperor of Japan.  There is a vast in between that still remains to be characterized.

Suppose you would like to make an effort to land such a job, because they are awesome.  Or, provide a trainee (perhaps child or student) with the maximum opportunities or chances to get such a job.  What should you do?  Not education, nor getting good grades, nor accomplishing impressive tasks are clearly the right answer (though they might have something to do with it).

What actions can you do to get someone to trust you?  What prevents someone else untrustworthy from doing the same actions?  This is an ancient problem.

Game theoretically, this is an imperfect information problem.  What signaling mechanisms?

I speculate that, for a vast majority of the posh jobs out there, there is nothing an average qualified person can do to attain them.  Trust has been built within a close, closed, network of connections, and if you are on the outside, you will forever remain outside.

A irony, I think, is that on average, most people actually are inherently trustworthy, yet (by above), they have been disqualified for being untrustworthy.  This is a market failure.

If true, this is a depressing reality in contrast to the ideal that America is the land of equal opportunity.  How can we change this?  This seems very difficult.  Shouldn't the market have developed signaling mechanisms?  Can technology help (better ways of examining an applicant's life?)?  Government intervention and regulation?

Two possible examples are at opposite ends of the income spectrum.  Poverty still seems strongly correlated with "being descended from slaves (outside the trust network)" generation after generation.  Corporate executives might be being hired not to do good, but mostly not to do tremendous harm even though they can -- the job doesn't actually require skills in line with their pay.