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Erase the Stress of Selling Your Business by Finding the Right Buyer
There is no denying the fact that life is much, much easier when one can find the right buyer for his or her business. Buying or selling a business can be a stressful affair, but much of that stress can be eliminated by getting the right support.
The Concept of the "Right Buyer"
In the recent Inc. article entitled, "How to Find the Right Buyer for Your Business and Avoid Negative Consequences," Bob House builds his article around a relatively simple and straightforward, but powerful, concept. House's notion is, "the right buyer is worth more than a big check."
House correctly points out that far too many sellers become fixated on exiting their business and grabbing a big pay day. In their focused interest in the sum they will receive, these sellers ignore a range of other important details. In part, sellers often miss the single greatest variable in the entire process: finding the most qualified buyer. The simple fact is that if sellers want to reduce their long-term stress, then there is no replacement for finding the most qualified buyer, as the wrong buyer can be "headache city!"
Plan in Advance
As House points out, it is only prudent to determine what you want out of a buyer well before you put your business up for sale. For example, if you don't want to offer financing, then that is a decision you need to make well before you begin the process.
Additionally, House wisely places considerable interest on pre-screening potential buyers. Pre-screening is a great reason to work with an experienced and proven business broker who can assist with the process. As a business owner your time is precious. The last thing you want are a lot of window shoppers wasting your time.
Keep Your Focus on Your Business
Remember, while your business is up for sale, you still have to run your business. Quite often, business owners have difficulty running their business and navigating the complex sales process simultaneously. The end result can be disastrous, as revenue can drop and business problems can arise.
Working with a business broker means that you are dramatically reducing your potential stressors throughout the sales process. A business broker will ensure that potential buyers are pre-screened and that only serious buyers are brought to you for consideration.
Currently, the market conditions are great for sellers. If you are considering selling, now is the time to find a business broker and jump into the market!
Do You Know What Kind of Business Owner You Really Are?
Does your business have real, long-lasting longevity or is your business a temporary entity that will vanish the second you stop working on it? In his insightful article in The Business Journals entitled, "Are You Living for Today as a Business Owner or Building Value?" author Kent Bernhard asks a very important question of readers, "Are you a lifestyle business owner or a value accelerator?"
Many business owners have never stopped to ask this very important, yet basic, question regarding their businesses. So, let's turn our attention to this key question that all business owners must stop and ask at some point.
As Bernhard points out the core issue here is how a given business owner defines the idea of success for him or herself. As Chuck Richards, the CEO of CoreValue Software notes, "At the end of the day, a lifestyle business is just a job."
Richards goes on to note that this is fine for many people. But if this is the case, it is a choice that one is making. Therefore, lifestyle business owners should be aware that they are, in fact, clearly making a choice.
Business owners who are lawyers, consultants and accountants often fall into the category of those with a "business as a job." They fail to accumulate enough assets for their business to really be more than a job. Summed up in another fashion, the business generates enough revenue to provide a comfortable lifestyle. However, it does not have the infrastructure or equity to remain profitable, or even in existence, once they walk away. As the owner and operator of the business, they are vital to its very existence. This means that the business only has value so long as the owner is working in the business on a regular basis. As a result, the owner may never really be able to exit the business.
As Bernhard points out, "To build a business as an asset, you have to become a value accelerator who looks beyond whether the business' profits are sufficient to maintain your lifestyle. It means looking at the business as an entity outside yourself." Those who fall into the value accelerator category, focus on figuring out creating value for the business as a financial asset that can operate independently.
Making sure that your business can continue on without you means that you have to build it, and that involves having a coherent and focused plan. Plan in advance and know how you will exit your business. To ultimately create value for the business entity itself, a plan must be in place that allows for your successful exit.
Business Buyers Can Leverage SBA Lending
Finding the money to start your own small business can be a challenge. Over the decades, countless people have turned to the Small Business Administration (SBA) for help. A recent Inc. Magazine article, "Kickstart Your Business Dreams with SBA Lending," by BizBuySell President, Bob House, explored how SBA lending can be used to the buyer's advantage.
The article covers the basics of an SBA loan and who should try to get one. House notes that the SBA doesn't provide loans itself, but instead facilitates lending and even micro-lending with a range of partners. The loans are backed by the government, which means that lenders are more willing to offer a loan to an entrepreneur who might not typically qualify for one. The fact is that the SBA will cover 75% of a lender's loss if the loan goes into default.
Entrepreneurs can benefit tremendously from this program. In some cases, an SBA loan even means skipping the need for collateral. SBA loans can be used for those looking to open a business, expand their existing business or open a franchise.
House points out that getting an SBA loan has much in common with receiving other types of loans. For example, it is necessary to be "bank ready." By "bank ready," House means that all of your financial documentation should be organized, clear to understand and ready to go.
Next, a buyer would need to check that he or she qualifies, find a lender and fill out the necessary SBA forms. In order to be eligible for an SBA loan, it is necessary that the business is a for-profit venture and that it will do business in the United States. Once the necessary forms have been submitted, it can take between 2 to 3 months for an application to be processed and potentially approved.
The simple fact is that the SBA helps thousands of people every year. If you want to buy a business or expand your current business, then working with the SBA could be exactly what you need. Of course, business brokers are experts on what it takes to buy. Working with a broker stands as one of the single best ways to turn the dream of owning a business into a reality.

subset: commoncrawl


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Imported treats and local sweets
Essence Cosmetics Launch in the United States
by Jessica M
As any true cosmetics devotee knows, makeup thrills can happen at any kind of retail location, on every price level. Sometimes it's a pleasure to "cave" on a hard-to-find product with luxurious packaging and a designer logo, and sometimes the "aha!" moment comes from an impulse purchase at the drugstore. Annie and Cavewoman have always inspired me to look high and low for rave-worthy makeup, so I'm happy to be able to report back to Blogdorf about Essence Cosmetics.
Essence Cosmetics has been around since 2001: it was founded in Germany, it spread to more than thirty countries in the global market,and it has just arrived in the United States. Most of the products are made in Europe, and the company is known for offering high quality formulas and on-trend colors at very low prices. In the States, every item is priced under five dollars. I recently had a chance to see and sample the line at a get-together hosted by Essence in New York, at the uptown location of Magnolia Bakery. (Yes, home of the famous cupcakes!)
Essence's product displays are definitely eye-catching: they're crammed with all the colors of the rainbow, and they're decorated with big pictures of Bratz-like girls. Once you look past the bright colors and cartoony imagery, however, you'll notice some very clever,high-performing products. The selection being brought to the States—it's being sold at Ulta stores and Ulta.com--includes color cosmetics for eyes, lips, and face, nail polishes and nail art accessories, and a few makeup tools.
In addition to the permanent product line, Essence releases limited edition collections several times a year. They recently offered a"Moonlight" collection inspired by the "Twilight" books and movies; it won't be available in the U.S., unfortunately, but I couldn't resist taking a photo for Annie, who introduced me to "Twilight."
The first limited edition collection to be released in the States will be "Surfer Babe," due out in June.
I've had the chance to sample a few products, so I'll be back in a few days with reviews of my favorite picks from Essence Cosmetics.
Have you ever tried anything from Essence? Feel free to comment!
Photos by Jessica M.
Labels: Essence Cosmetics, Jessica's Reviews


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The Importance of Frugal Engineering
Providing new goods and services to "bottom of the pyramid" customers requires a radical rethinking of product development.
A cell phone that makes phone calls — and does little else; a portable refrigerator the size of a small cooler; a car that sells for about US$2,200 (100,000 rupees). These are some of the results of "frugal engineering," a powerful and ultimately essential approach to developing products and services in emerging markets.
To get a handle on what frugal engineering is, it helps to understand what it is not. Frugal engineering is not simply low-cost engineering. It is not a scheme to boost profit margins by squeezing the marrow out of suppliers' bones. It is not simply the latest take on the decades-long focus on cost cutting.
Instead, frugal engineering is an overarching philosophy that enables a true "clean sheet" approach to product development. Cost discipline is an intrinsic part of the process, but rather than simply cutting existing costs, frugal engineering seeks to avoid needless costs in the first place. It recognizes that merely removing features from existing products to sell them cheaper in emerging markets is a losing game. That's because emerging-market customers have unique needs that usually aren't addressed by mature-market products, and because the cost base of developed world products, even when stripped down, remains too high to allow competitive prices and reasonable profits in the developing world.
Frugal engineering recalls an approach common in the early days of U.S. assembly-line manufacturing: Henry Ford's Model T is a prime example. But as industries grew and matured over the decades, and as consumers prospered to levels few would have predicted a century ago, product development processes became hardwired and standard operating procedures worked against frugality.
In addition, the profit structure in mature markets reduced incentives for major change. Constant expansion of features available to consumers in the developed world, frivolous or not, has provided many businesses with their richest profit margins. Mature-market customers continue to accept price premiums for new features, leading companies to over-engineer their product lines — at least from the point of view of emerging-market customers. The virtual extinction of manual car windows in the United States is just one example.
Frugal engineering, by contrast, addresses the billions of consumers at the bottom of the pyramid who are quickly moving out of poverty in China, India, Brazil, and other emerging nations. They are enjoying their first tastes of modern prosperity, and are shopping for the basics, not for fancy features. According to C.K. Prahalad, author of The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid (Wharton School Publishing, 2005), these potential customers, "unserved or underserved by the large organized private sector, including multinational firms," total 4 to 5 billion of the 6.7 billion people on Earth. (See also Prahalad's "The Innovation Sandbox," s+b, Autumn 2006.) Although the purchasing power of any of these new consumers as an individual is only a fraction of a consumer's purchasing power in mature markets, in aggregate they represent a market nearly as large as that of the developed world.
Attracted by the size and rapid growth of emerging markets — concurrent with a growth slowdown in the developed world — companies in a range of industries are establishing distribution and manufacturing operations as well as research and development centers in these regions. However, some of these companies may not fully grasp the challenges that competition in emerging markets entails. The prospect of high-volume profit streams may be enticing, but those profits must be earned in the face of lower prices, lower per-unit profits, and stringent cost targets.
In addition, too few companies realize how demanding emerging-market customers can be. They don't spend easily, because they don't have much to spend. They require a different set of product features and functions than their developed-world counterparts, but still insist on high quality. Global companies, therefore, must change the way they think about product design and engineering. Simply selling the cheapest products on hand or reusing technologies from higher-priced products will not cut costs enough and is unlikely to result in the kind of products these new customers will buy.
The central tenet behind every frugal engineering decision is maximizing value to the customer while minimizing nonessential costs. The term frugal engineering was coined in 2006 by Renault Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn to describe the competency of Indian engineers in developing products like Tata Motors' Nano, the pint-sized, low-cost automobile. Companies such as Suzuki paved the way for the development of low-cost automobiles, but there may be no better example of frugal engineering than the Nano, which will allow millions of people with modest means to reliably drive their own car. The Nano is not — like so many other low-cost vehicles — a stripped-down version of a traditional, more expensive car design. Like other newly engineered products selling well in emerging markets, ranging from refrigerators to laptop computers to X-ray machines, it is based on a bottom-up approach to product development.
Even global companies uninterested in the growth offered by the world's lowest-income consumers will have to pay attention to the lessons of frugal engineering: Products developed with this approach are beginning to compete with goods sold in developed countries, a trend that's likely to continue. Deere & Company, for example, designed and sold small, lower-powered tractors in the Indian market, but didn't begin selling such models in the U.S. until an Indian company, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd., beat them to it. Mahindra & Mahindra has proven an able competitor to Deere in larger tractors as well. General Electric (GE), on the other hand, has been more proactive; for example, it has sold a revolutionary new low-cost handheld ultrasound scanner in developed markets by incorporating frugal engineering lessons learned in its Indian medical research and development lab. A low-cost GE electrocardiogram machine, developed at the same Indian lab for the local markets, is now being sold in the United States and Europe as well.
Meeting all these challenges will require a change in corporate culture. Some companies will be up to it; others companies will not. A successful approach to frugal engineering involves new ways of thinking about customers, innovation, and organization.
Understanding the Customer
The ultimate goal of frugal engineering couldn't be more basic: to provide the essential functions people need — a way to wash clothes, keep food cold, get to work — at a price they can afford. Critical attention to low cost is always accompanied by a commitment to maximizing customer value. The Tata Nano development team's decision not to include a radio on the standard model wasn't a simple move to avoid cost. The team understood that the typical Nano customer places far more value on extra storage space. Using what normally would be the radio slot for storage not only avoided a major cost, but also added value for the customer.
Such carefully calculated trade-offs, made at the product planning stage, serve the dual purpose of maintaining low costs and increasing the product's overall functionality and utility for the buyer. Assessment of those trade-offs requires close, careful observation on the part of planners if they are to arrive at a deep understanding of the ways a product fits (or doesn't fit) into customers' lives.
The Nokia 1100 cell phone is another example. Experience has shown that when low-income people in just about any country begin to enjoy a bit of economic prosperity, one of their first purchases is a cell phone. Many new cell phone customers in emerging markets are agricultural workers who spend their days outdoors. When Nokia developers watched field-workers using mobile phones in India, they noticed that the intense humidity made the phones slick and hard to hold or dial. So the phone was built with a nonslip silicon coating on its keypad and sides. The handset was also designed to resist damage from dust that is common in arid climates and some factory environments. The phones are otherwise basic: They can send and receive phone calls and text messages. The screens are monochrome. Because the phones lack fancy software, the power draw is smaller, so they can operate longer between charges. The only real extra is a tiny, energy-efficient flashlight that's proven popular in areas where power blackouts are common — in other words, in most rural villages and many emerging-market cities. At a price of $15 to $20, the Nokia 1100 is the best-selling cell phone ever.
Refrigerators provide another good example. Customers at the bottom of the pyramid can't afford traditional energy-sucking, compressor-driven refrigerators, not even the "small" floor models a Western business might have installed under the office credenza to keep drinks cold.
Rather than cut costs out of a bigger refrigerator, India's Godrej Appliances started with a clean sheet, closely observing the occupants of village huts. Most Indians, they noted, go to the grocery every day. They don't buy in bulk. A refrigerator that could hold just a few items would be plenty. So Godrej produced the ChotuKool, which translates into "Little Cool" in English.
The top-opening fridge measures 1.5 feet tall by 2 feet wide (roughly 46 by 61 centimeters) and has a capacity of only 1.6 gallons (6 liters). It has no compressor, instead using a cooling chip and fan similar to those that keep desktop computers from overheating. It can run on a battery during the power outages that are inevitable in rural villages. And since rural Indians change residences frequently, the ChotuKool also comes with a handle, making it easier to transport. By keeping the number of parts down to around 20 instead of the 200-plus used in conventional refrigerators, Godrej keeps the price low, too, at about $55. Spending time in people's homes and watching how they actually use products, rather than relying on focus groups or other secondary or tertiary research, was the key to determining consumer needs.
The frugal engineering approach is not limited to consumer products. Zhongxing Medical, a small medical devices company in China, developed an X-ray machine with a price tag one-twentieth that of the typical X-ray machines made by foreign companies. To achieve this, Zhongxing, a subsidiary of Beijing Aerospace, made a trade-off: Rather than engineer the machine to accommodate the wide range of sophisticated scans common in Western hospitals, the company focused on a machine that could perform only the most routine chest scans, which represent the vast majority of scans. By understanding the fundamental needs of its target hospitals — hospitals that cannot afford a conventionally priced X-ray machine but still hope to serve a majority of patients — Zhongxing has captured about 50 percent of the Chinese X-ray market.
Bottom-up Innovation
Typically, when a well-established automaker designs and builds an inexpensive car, the company's thinking is biased by decades of practices and procedures, and by its relationships with employees, customers, and suppliers. The approach reuses existing designs and relies on existing components. In essence, these companies start with a more expensive car and focus on ways to make it cheaper. That may count as a form of cost cutting, but it is not frugal engineering.
By contrast, when Tata Motors engineers began creating the Nano, they were inspired more by the three-wheeled vehicles known in India as auto-rickshaws than by any existing car models in Tata Motors' lineup. Building up from the bare minimum enabled the engineers to achieve their cost (and price) targets without compromising the essential functions of the car. If instead the Tata Nano had been designed on the platform of the then cheapest Tata car, it would have been twice the price.
Consider the conventional approach: Decades' worth of engineering value is built into even the least expensive of today's automobiles. Components, right down to the steel used, have steadily become more sophisticated, and often more expensive. The cost base, the design thinking, the very idea of what makes an automobile — all combine into a set of structural costs that simply go unquestioned. Reversing course is difficult, and few want to try. For example, if you asked Western designers to come up with a low-cost wiper system for cars, it's unlikely they would challenge the fundamental architecture of two wiper blades. But it would be cheaper to place one blade in the center that sweeps from end to end. India's auto-rickshaws have a single blade. Now, so does the Nano.
To achieve the drastically lower prices that emerging markets require, companies must be open to rethinking all aspects of the product. The Nano uses not only just one wiper, but also just one side-view mirror, and the seats are not adjustable. This represents a clear departure from the trends in conventional vehicles, and involves questioning the form and necessity of so-called standard features. Making these sorts of radical decisions is a form of innovation. Such choices are answers to questions that too few global companies are asking.
Organizational Agility
Frugal engineering requires that companies be open to organizational innovation, as well. Three areas are particularly important.
1. Cross-functional teams. The Tata Nano was developed by a team of 500 mostly young engineers, significantly smaller than the teams of 800-plus typically employed by Western automakers. In fact, a team for a new platform like the Nano at a U.S. or European car company would likely total more than 1,000. To make sure that the project got the attention it required, Tata created a separate unit, isolated from the rest of the company. In addition to its compact size, the Nano engineering team had another advantage over traditional engineering groups: It worked cross-functionally with other teams to maximize the chances of finding ways to keep costs low. When a legacy automaker like General Motors launches a car, its marketing group might be five times the size of the Nano's marketing team, which totaled three people.
The computer chip that replaced the compressor in Godrej's low-cost refrigerator represented such a radical move that it likely would not have made it to the final product had the development group started with the standard operating procedures of the refrigerator industry. The procurement team instead raced to identify a low-cost component supplier while the manufacturing team quickly reengineered the assembly line to handle chips instead of compressors.
Why would that kind of agility be difficult for a Western company? Typically, the more mature an organization, the more rigid the functional silos. There tends to be little coordination between functions without an explicit effort from top management, which must either create a new structure for the team or use brute force to encourage communication. That is happening more often, but it's still more the exception than the rule.
In mature industries, companies are optimized for their main customers. For emerging markets, a different organizational approach is required, both within and outside the organization.
2. A nontraditional supply chain. When reducing costs, most companies focus on getting better prices from their suppliers. The problem with this approach is that the reductions can go only so far; cut too deep, and the suppliers' margins are eliminated. Frugal engineering instead treats the suppliers as an extension of the enterprise. Such a lean manufacturing approach is not new, of course. But frugal engineering pushes the concept further, by demanding new levels of cost transparency, and by requiring that suppliers grant genuine authority to their representatives on the core product team.
A frugal development team must look beyond the usual, approved list of suppliers. The targets in frugal engineering projects are often so tight that conventional suppliers are unlikely to be able to meet the requirements for cost, quality, and timeliness of delivery.
At the same time, suppliers step up and become more involved in development projects. Traditionally, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) dictate their requirements to suppliers; the suppliers ask few questions and compete on price. In frugal engineering, the game is different. OEMs and suppliers team up to set cost targets and a cost structure. Rather than focus on individual components, they work together to optimize entire systems. For example, the Nano uses a simple motorcycle-style speedometer and forgoes a tachometer in the instrument cluster, but it includes a digital odometer. The costs saved on one were spent on the other, avoiding an analog odometer and a tachometer that few customers would use. By cooperating on developing the whole system, the supplier and Tata created a more appealing instrument cluster while still meeting the target cost.
Often, a higher-level commitment from suppliers has required a mandate from supplier CEOs. For example, Bosch CEO Bernd Bohr took on the cost-target challenge for the Nano and made sure Bosch came through by adapting a motorcycle starter motor to save weight and by finding a way to trim several ounces from the generator.
3. Top-down support. Nothing is more important to frugal engineering than commitment from the top — and not just from suppliers. The best examples of frugal engineering were championed by company founders. Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata, said, "I will design a car for $2,200. Period." (See "Too Good to Fail," by Ann Graham, s+b, Spring 2010.) The same happened at Mahindra & Mahindra, when Anand Mahindra, the managing director, publicly backed the cost-control plans of Pawan Goenka, the company's automotive chief. Mahindra's personal support proved essential to keeping costs low. A new automobile platform in the U.S. might cost anywhere from $700 million to $1 billion. Mahindra's Scorpio SUV was developed at a cost of $150 million. The car may lack the sophistication and status of other makers' luxury models. But it's right for its market.
Reprint No. 10201
Author profiles:
- Vikas Sehgal is a partner in Booz & Company's global engineered products and services team based in Chicago. He specializes in emerging markets strategy, product strategy, engineering globalization, and policy formulation.
- Kevin Dehoff is a partner with Booz & Company in Florham Park, N.J., and is the global leader of the firm's innovation business. He has spent more than 15 years helping clients drive growth and improve performance through innovation.
- Ganesh Panneer is a Booz & Company senior associate based in Chicago. He specializes in emerging markets product strategy and innovation for clients in the automotive and industrial sectors.


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Licensed Mental Health Professional 1 PRN-1
Vanderbilt Health
Discover Vanderbilt University Medical Center: Located in Nashville, Tennessee, and operating at a global crossroads of teaching, discovery, and patient care, VUMC is a community of diverse individuals who come to work each day with the simple aim of changing the world. It is a place where your expertise will be valued, your knowledge expanded, and your abilities challenged. Vanderbilt Health recognizes that diversity is essential for excellence and innovation. We are committed to an inclusive environment where everyone has the chance to thrive and where your diversity of culture, thinking, learning, and leading is sought and celebrated. It is a place where employees know they are part of something that is bigger than themselves, take exceptional pride in their work and never settle for what was good enough yesterday. Vanderbilt's mission is to advance health and wellness through preeminent programs in patient care, education, and research. Organization: VPH Social Work - PHPJob Summary: JOB SUMMARYPerforms behavioral health diagnostic and psycho-social assessments utilizing the DSM-V, implements group, family and individual psycho therapeutic interventions including crisis intervention, develops treatment plans and disposition plans. Maintains contact with family and community agencies and makes referrals. Actively collaborates with team to meet patient care management and system improvement goals. Represents the behavioral health enterprise on institutional and community committees/task forces. . KEY RESPONSIBILITIES Allied health is among the fastest growing occupations in healthcare today. This area can be defined as credentialed professionals who perform supportive, diagnostic, and therapeutic health care services to promote health and prevent disease in a variety of settings. These areas are crucial to Vanderbilt Health's reputation for excellence in these areas that has made us a major center for patient referrals from throughout the Mid-South. Each year, people throughout Tennessee and the southeast choose Vanderbilt Health for their health care because of our leadership in medical science and our dedication to treating patients with dignity and compassion. Core Accountabilities: Organizational Impact: Executes job responsibilities with the understanding of how output would affect and impact other areas related to own job area/team with occasional guidance. Problem Solving/ Complexity of work: Analyzes moderately complex problems using technical experience and judgment. Breadth of Knowledge: Has expanded knowledge gained through experience within a professional area. Team Interaction: Provides informal guidance and support to team members.Core Capabilities : Supporting Colleagues:- Develops Self and Others: Invests time, energy, and enthusiasm in developing self/others to help improve performance e and gain knowledge in new areas.- Builds and Maintains Relationships: Maintains regular contact with key colleagues and stakeholders using formal and informal opportunities to expand and strengthen relationships.- Communicates Effectively: Recognizes group interactions and modifies one's own communication style to suit different situations and audiences. Delivering Excellent Services:- Serves Others with Compassion: Seeks to understand current and future needs of relevant stakeholders and customizes services to better address them.- Solves Complex Problems: Approaches problems from different angles; Identifies new possibilities to interpret opportunities and develop concrete solutions.- Offers Meaningful Advice and Support: Provides ongoing support and coaching in a constructive manner to increase employees' effectiveness. Ensuring High Quality: - Performs Excellent Work: Engages regularly in formal and informal dialogue about quality; directly addresses quality issues promptly.- Ensures Continuous Improvement: Applies various learning experiences by looking beyond symptoms to uncover underlying causes of problems and identifies ways to resolve them. - Fulfills Safety and Regulatory Requirements: Understands all aspects of providing a safe environment and performs routine safety checks to prevent safety hazards from occurring. Managing Resources Effectively: - Demonstrates Accountability: Demonstrates a sense of ownership, focusing on and driving critical issues to closure.- Stewards Organizational Resources: Applies understanding of the departmental work to effectively manage resources for a department/area.- Makes Data Driven Decisions: Demonstrates strong understanding of the information or data to identify and elevate opportunities. Fostering Innovation:- Generates New Ideas: Proactively identifies new ideas/opportunities from multiple sources or methods to improve processes beyond conventional approaches.- Applies Technology: Demonstrates an enthusiasm for learning new technologies, tools, and procedures to address short-term challenges.- Adapts to Change: Views difficult situations and/or problems as opportunities for improvement; actively embraces change instead of emphasizing negative elements.Position Qualifications: Responsibilities: Certifications: LIC-Licensed Clinical Social Worker - TennesseeWork Experience: Relevant Work ExperienceExperience Level : Less than 1 yearEducation: Master's (Required)Vanderbilt Health recognizes that diversity is essential for excellence and innovation. We are committed to an inclusive environment where everyone has the chance to thrive and to the principles of equal opportunity and affirmative action. EOE/AA/Women/Minority/Vets/Disabled |


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With probiotics increasingly included in functional foods, demonstrating stability, and therefore viability, under processing and storage conditions becomes vital. To that end, Evaluation of the stability of Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 during processing and storage of functional foods was published in the International Journal of Food Science & Technology.
The article, authored by Muhammed Majeed, Kalyanam Nagabhushanam, Sankaran Natarajan, Arumugam Sivakumar, Furqan Ali, and Shaheen Majeed, was published online January 20, 2016 (DOI: 10.1111/ijfs.13044) as an Open Access article.
The study focuses on the stability of Bacillus coagulans MTCC 5856 in functional foods during processing and storage. B. coagulans MTCC 5856 was found to be significantly stable during processing and in respective storage conditions of baked food, beverages, vegetable oil, concentrated glucose syrup and in brewed coffee. The results provided the scientific evidence of B. coagulans MTCC 5856 stability in various functional foods during processing and storage.
The authors found:
• B. coagulans MTCC 5856 was found to be stable during processing and storage of baked food.
• B. coagulans MTCC 5856 retained 87% viability during coffee brewing.
• B. coagulans MTCC 5856 retained 99% viability in apple juice up to 6 months at 4°C and had over 90% viability in glucose syrup up to 24 months at 40°C.
"The most crucial property that a probiotic can have, to confer health benefits, is demonstrated stability," said Shaheen Majeed, Marketing Director, Sabinsa and one of the authors of the paper. "In this publication, our studies on LactoSpore® prove beyond a doubt that our room temperature shelf-stable probiotic can be incorporated in everyday types of formulations. We're creating more opportunities for our customers with different kinds of probiotic formulations using LactoSpore®, which ultimately benefits the consumer."


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Need a gift? Click here. Shopping's done.
Contact Us
Steve Jackson Games SKU: SJG37-0306
17-page PDF
Dungeon Fantasy is mostly about hacking and slashing. Mostly. But there are brave souls who seek enlightenment in the dungeon. Most end up skewered, burned, and eaten, but occasionally, knowledge truly does prove to be power.
Dungeon Fantasy 4: Sages lets you play one of the few who successfully mix reading with bleeding, wordplay with swordplay, erudition with eradication . . . well, you get the idea (hey, you're supposed to be smart!). It introduces the artificer, who adds gizmos and technology to the party's swords and spells, and the scholar, who's a true master of obscure lore (such as "Where did ancient cultures hide their stuff?"). These new roles come with character templates, special abilities, and lenses for combining them with other professions.
Even non-sages will find this lore useful! Artificers create funky gadgets that any delver would appreciate. And what good would scholars be without complete rules for books and magical scrolls?
These new character options and gear further expand Dungeon Fantasy 1: Adventurers, and will surely be a hit with any adventuring party that doesn't consist entirely of illiterate ogre barbarians.
Written by Sean Punch


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Luck enhancement Gem Pendants are made from three different semi precious stones and they are specifically made to improve and strengthen a persons horoscope.
In any horoscope, the houses forming the "Trikon" i.e. the First , Fifth and the Ninth house are supposed to be the most important houses. The first house or the "Lagna" represents the entire personality of the person where as the fifth house represents the intellect, education, children and the ninth house represents the Luck ( Bhagya ). If the above three houses are strong i.e. the Lords of these houses are strong and benefic then there is no doubt that a person becomes Happy, Healthy, Wealthy and famous as per the stipulations laid out by most eminent astrologers.
The stones used in the Luck Enhancement Lockets represents the Lords of the above three houses.
Semi precious substitutes of Emerald + Blue Sapphire + Diamond
1.25 to 1.5 inches approx


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There are a lot of benefits of having a composable infrastructure. Resources can be reconfigured to make up the infrastructure environment each workload needs. A developer can request VMs with any combination of compute, network, and storage capacity.
At acumor, we can help you create and optimize the infrastructure you need to achieve more. Contact us today to learn more about your different infrastructure options and how we can help you implement them.


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A sculptural object crafted with delicate optic fibres, threaded through acrylic
rings and illuminated sublimely from beneath using LED lighting.
This work is operated by a motion sensor and timer, hence the observer can
view them with or without illumination, creating a dual experience.
This vibrant object is contained within a clear acrylic cover box mounted on
an elegant stand.
Clear acrylic box- 22 x 42 x 22 cm
Stand- 86 x 42 x 22cm


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Sideboard White 55.1"x13.8"x30" Chipboard
This sideboard, featuring a minimalist design, will make a practical as well as highly decorative addition to your home.
With 6 drawers, the sideboard provides ample storage space for books, multimedia appliances and other items. The sturdy tabletop is ideal for displaying decorative objects, photo frames, or potted plants. It can also be used as a low board, side cabinet, etc. Thanks to the premium board material, this sideboard is built to last.
The drawer cabinet is easy to clean with a damp cloth.
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2 jAnd you were kdead in the trespasses and sins 2 lin which you once walked, following the course of this world, following mthe prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in nthe sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in othe passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body1 and the mind, and pwere by nature qchildren of wrath, like the rest of mankind.2 4 But3 God, being rrich in mercy, sbecause of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even twhen we were dead in our trespasses, umade us alive together with Christ—vby grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and wseated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable xriches of his grace in ykindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For zby grace you have been saved athrough faith. And this is bnot your own doing; cit is the gift of God, 9 dnot a result of works, eso that no one may boast. 10 For fwe are his workmanship, gcreated in Christ Jesus hfor good works, iwhich God prepared beforehand, jthat we should walk in them.
11 Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh, called "the uncircumcision" by what is called kthe circumcision, which is made in the flesh by hands— 12 remember lthat you were at that time separated from Christ, malienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to nthe covenants of promise, ohaving no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were pfar off have been brought near qby the blood of Christ. 14 For rhe himself is our peace, swho has made us both one and has broken down tin his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in uordinances, that he might create in himself one vnew man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might wreconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and xpreached peace to you who were yfar off and peace to those who were znear. 18 For athrough him we both have baccess in cone Spirit to the Father. 19 So then you are no longer dstrangers and aliens,4 but you are efellow citizens with the saints and fmembers of the household of God, 20 gbuilt on the foundation of the hapostles and prophets, iChrist Jesus himself being jthe cornerstone, 21 kin whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into la holy temple in the Lord. 22 In him myou also are being built together ninto a dwelling place for God by5 the Spirit.
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DPCT - 8 Week Leg Strength Training Plan (Complementary) + Support Groups & $25 OFF NEXT PLAN!
DPCT - 8 Week Leg Strength Training Plan (Complementary) + Support Groups & $25 OFF NEXT PLAN!
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8 Weeks
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Plan Description
This plan has been designed by Pav Bryan (coachpav.com) - Amazon #1 New Release Author, BikesEtc Magazines 'Cycling Guru' and 'King of Endurance'.
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Training Plan Sample Week
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Warning! This is a long 'un! (Perhaps making up for the long hiatus to follow, while I go hermit for a while... Though I am sure you'll all keep things lively in comments!) So fetch a snack. Settle down. Gird yourself for a very long and very intricate exercise in re-appraising everything that you ever believed about economics and politics! (Is Brin arrogant, or what? ;-)
As most of you know, I have long inveighed against the hoary and almost-meaningless so-called "left-right political axis," a metaphor to which (absurdly) countless millions of people still cling, 250 years after the French (of all people) thought it up -- a "spectrum" that mindlessly narrows and channels all political debate. A tidy model that halves every political IQ, forcing sophisticated, 21st Century minds into enmity with folk who may share many values, and compels you into alliance with others who want a world very different than you do.
(See a Questionaire that pokes away and explores underlying assumptions of ideology, at: http://www.davidbrin.com/questionnaire.html)
I have made tidy sums, over the years, wagering that no two (unwarned) individuals in a group (of almost any size) will write down definitions of "left" or "right" that much resemble each other, let alone offer cogent description of the complex quandaries that we face in modern times. In frustration, I have occasionally tried to serve up alternative metaphorsthat might better reflect real, contemporary problems, issues and divisions -- or at least divide up the political landscape more sensibly. (The word "arrogant" isn't strong enough!)
To view a few examples of these audacious re-appraisals, see:
* The earliest, from a talk given in 1987; this model, based on a meme-psychology metaphor, predicted the fall of the USSR and an era of conflict with "macho" cultures. Spot on forecasts. In fact, just about the ONLY spot-on forecast.
* This one attempted to trace underlying motives of some of today's players in a viciously artificial "culture war."
* An alternative political "map" breaks away from standard cliches and especially the flaw of tendentiousness. Some insights about the dangers of aristocratism. Aimed at a specialized audience, I'm afraid. But it does expose the pitfalls of all political "mapmaking."
* "Horizon Theory" sorts people out according to how readily they allow themselves to notice when improved safety and prosperity call for an expansion of horizons. This natural trend seems to occur everywhere that humans have established societies -- allowing lower fear levels to translate into farther perspectives in worry, time, and inclusion. But some people and cultures are better at this than others. (Far better at explaining "red-blue differences" than cliches of left or right.)
In every case, the effort was not so much to be right -- proposing some Grand New All-Encompassing Theory -- as much as to try on new ways of viewing familiar things. Groping at the elephant from different angles (to put it allegorically.)
The essential truth is that metaphors can only illustrate and offer insights! The map is NOT the territory. If we should have learned anything from the calamities of Marx and Freud -- from communism to every other kind of 'ism -- the lesson is that human beings are far too complex to describe in pat words, even as individuals, let alone in vast societies.
That doesn't mean we should stop creating models. We are the model making animal.
It does mean that we should learn the maturity to view each model as... well... a model.
Now I am provoked to do it yet again. Because this damnfool left-right thing has yet another aspect that I haven't addressed before. Yet another part of a dismal dichotomy that badly needs debunking, at long last.
I am talking about the struggle between those preaching "prudent sustainability" and those who claim that market forces will solve all looming crises of poverty, pollution, energy depletion and so on.
We've all grown familiar with these apparently rigid "sides", and so let me avow something from the start. If I am forced to choose between them, you can bet that I will side with the New Puritans of the sustainability crowd! They, at least, want somemodernist attention paid to assertive problem-solving, instead of preaching an indolent, pollyanna faith that some grand and superior external force will come to our rescue, averting calamity in the nick of time.
(Did it, ever, in the past? I repeat that challenge. Did such a thing happen? Ever?)
But that's the point. I will not choose sides between the extreme poles of yet another absurd "devil's dichotomy." As I say in my review of Jared Diamond's Collapse and my comments on the War on Science...we don't have to pick between two perfectly opposite positions! In fact, that kind of inflexibility is the surest way to guarantee our failure as a civilization.
So let's pull back from our immediate troubles, once again, and ponder how these two viewpoints may reflect assumptions that are far older and more similar than any of the adversaries think, reflecting habits of thought going back thousands of years.
In fact, there are certain ways in which doctrinaire leftists are taking up old-time feudalist positions while today's neo-feudalists of the right seem, at first, to be standing up for the Enlightenment... only to show their truer, reactionary colors when we dig a little deeper.
It all begins by re-examining the sunny optimism of those who think that everything is gonna be just hunky dory. That we're all certain to come out of these times in and great shape, simply by trusting to the blind hand of commerce.
Warning: do not read on unless you feel prepared to curb normal political reflexes. Every single time that you react to a statement by diagnosing it (or me) in terms of left or right, YOU WILL BE WRONG. Sometimes diametrically! It will be a wild ride. Now enjoy.
Let's start by looking at a book that was touted recently by the legendary economics/investment guru, John Mauldin -- "The Bottomless Well" by Peter Huber and Mark P. Mills, provocatively sub-titled "The Twilight of Fuel, the Virtue of Waste, and Why We Will Never Run Out of Energy."
Sayeth Mauldin: "Huber and Mills take a hard look at the way we normally think about energy and turn conventional thinking on its head, offering what they call seven great energy heresies.
1. The cost of energy has less to do with the cost of fuel.... (than) the hardware we use to refine, process and use the fuel.
2. "Waste" is virtuous. We use up most of our energy refining energy itself. Waste lets us do more life-affirming things better, more cleanly, and safely.
3. The more efficient our technology, the more energy we consume. More efficient technology lets more people do more, and faster - and more/more/faster invariably swamps all the efficiency gains.
4. The competitive advantage in manufacturing is swinging back to the U.S.. Steam engines launched the first industrial revolution; internal combustion engines and electric generators kicked off the 2nd. The 3rd, desktop computing, is now propelling American labor productivity far ahead.
5. Human demand for energy is insatiable in the tireless battle against dispersion and decay.
6. Energy supplies are infinite, even if petroleum is not.
7. If energy policies similar to ours can be implemented worldwide, our grandchildren will inhabit a planet with less pollution, a more stable biosphere, and better-balanced carbon books than at any time since the rise of agriculture some five thousand years ago."
Wow! Heretical? Yes. Deliberately provocative? You bet...
...and at the top layer, Huber and Mills are also jibbering what amounts to stark, raving lunacy! None of these statements follow, even from their stated or implicit premises! Nor do they represent the way that prudent people have ever behaved in the past. Ever.
Don't you find it stunning how few bright fools compare their prescriptions to 4,000 years of actual human experience? I could cite dozens of historical examples of eras when imprudent waste, inefiiciency, resource depletion and heedless lack of planning resulted in civilization-wide calamity (see Jared Diamond's book: Collapse), whereas there is not a single example, in all of the human past, when proposals such as Huber & Mills offer actually resulted in a society's success.
Not one. Yet, people with high IQs are actually able to speak such absurd nostrums and convince themselves that they are not only true, but self-evident. Moreover, with a straight face they call themselves "conservative."
(A side question: How did "spendthrift liberals" ever become the ones pushing puritan values of thrift on the grand scale -- from budget-balancing to smaller government to international restraint to "waste-not" efficiency -- while "conservatives" preach against saving anything for a rainy day? More to the point, are we really too obstinate in our cliches to comment or even notice?)
And yet, if you read these deliberately provocative proposals (by Huber & Mills and others like them) only with reflexive disdain or automatic, dismissive loathing, then you are missing the point at many levels.
First - guys like this thrive on provoking apoplexy. I know. I recognize fellow contrarians... though rigid ones.
Second - bright fools are not only fools. They are also... bright!
. . Hence, even when they are clearly acting as shills for Exxon/Murdoch, is that any reason not to read and listen carefully, seeking value?
. . Dig this. Recent scientific studies have shown that we are at our most distrustworthy and addictively delusional while in the act of dismissing evidence presented by our foes! Our brains secrete reward chemicals every time we skim and shrug and sneer at opponents.
. . In contrast, isn't it a sign of true wisdom to instead sift through your adversary's meanings, in order to separate wheat from chaff?
Consider. Such people are often very clever at lining up both facts and trends that exploit the weakest parts of the argument for prudent efficiency and sustainability. . . . Nu? Don't we want those weakest portions exposed? So that the argument for sustainability can be improved? Again, the principle is CITOKATE. (Criticism is the only known antidote to error.)
Third - and most important - these authors absolutely miss the point of what we are all arguing about. Indeed, I think their opponents miss the key point, as well.
In fact, everybody does.
Unfortunately, the surface issues that Huber and Wills and their fellow cornucopians raise -- (e.g. whether certain technological advances may or may not rescue sustainable growth) -- distract from a layer that is much more meaningful... and far less explored. This is one more case where the underlying psychology and personal agenda are vastly more interesting than specific details of argument.
See my article on "Singularities and Nightmares,"
There I try to put in perspective the psychological phenomenon called "techno transcendentalism." Here's an excerpt:
Depending on whatever decade you happen to live in, techno-transcendentalism has shifted from one fad to another, pinning fervent hopes upon the scientific flavor of the week. For example, a hundred years ago, Marxists and Freudians wove compelling models of human society — or mind — predicting that rational application of these models and rules would result in far higher levels of general happiness. Subsequently, with popular news about advances in agriculture and evolutionary biology, some groups grew captivated by eugenics — the allure of improving the human animal. On occasion, misguided and even horrendous undertakings prompted widespread revulsion. Yet, this recurring dream has lately revived in new forms, with the promise of genetic engineering and neurotechnology.
Enthusiasts for nuclear power in the 1950's promised energy too cheap to meter. Some of the same passion was seen in a widespread enthusiasm for space colonies, in the 1970' s and 80's, and in today's ongoing cyber-transcendentalism, which promises ultimate freedom and privacy for everyone, if only we just start encrypting every Internet message, using anonymity online to perfectly mask the frail beings who are typing at a real keyboard. Over the long run, some hold out hope that human minds will be able to download into computers or the vast new frontier of mid-21st Century cyberspace, freeing individuals of any remaining slavery to our crude and fallible organic bodies.
This long tradition — of bright people pouring faith and enthusiasm into transcendental dreams — eerily resembling the way previous generations clasped salvation tales that were more religious or magical. This recurring theme tells us a lot about one aspect of our nature, a trait that crosses all cultures and all centuries. Are techno-transcendentalists really all that different, deep-down, than Saint Francis or Buddha - or kabbalist rabbis - vesting what amounts to sacred devotion upon unproved assumptions, almost as articles of trascendant faith?
Let's be clear. I am not saying that any... or even all... of these fields of social or physical science did not contribute to our growing edifice of understanding, or, ultimately, to future great expansions of human power and maturation. No, what I want to point to is the psychological qualities of quasi-religious EXCLUSIVITY and PURITY true believers would routinely invest in one area, calling their chosen path central. That "this is it."
Reiterating; might all of this be less a matter of technology than of personality?
Returning closer to the topic at hand, how does any of this apply to the cornucopian mythology of Huber and Mills? Of Julian Symon and Bjorn Lomberg? The supreme rationalization of those in the elite who do not want governments, legislatures, universities or other publicly accountable institutions to deliberate or plan strategies for dealing with onrushing change.
Now first let me put aside any notion that I'm an adherent of the opposite principle -- the general notion called Guided Allocation of Resources (GAR). As you will see below, I most definitely am not!
What I will show is that this dispute goes back a long way. It is an ancient dichotomy... and one that's deeply misunderstood.
To those who were raised in the 20th Century, this description surely sounds like socialism. But that is a narrow and parochial view of GAR. A glaring logical and historical fallacy. An absurdity, in fact. (As a test of your own flexibility and sagacity, stop here and ponder for a moment why I call this reflex association preposterous. Why do I say that socialism is NOT the foremost or exclusive exemplar of guided allocation? Think "history" and stretch your assumptions a bit, before reading on.)
In fact, GAR has been the fundamental principle of governance and economics in nearly all human societies -- not just socialistic ones -- ever since the discovery of agriculture! Take the cabals of kings, nobles, and clerics that ruled over most of them. Those oligarchs felt just as sure of their superior ability to manage and allocate resources -- including human labor -- as the Soviet nomenklatura commissars were. Perhaps more so!
(In fact, the parallels between these two groups -- between commissars and feudalists -- are far greater than their differences! This should come as no surprise, since both groups were power-grabbers and both groups were human. Duh.)
Think. Isn't this the obvious way that most human societies will tend to become organized? Whichever sub-group is already powerful, that group will USE their power to get MORE power! It's simple Darwinism, borne out by the fact that this process of collusive authority-grabbing normally led to greater reproductive success. Success for the rulers, that is. (Recent evidence shows that fully 8% of modern Chinese are descended from the harem of Ghengiz Khan! Ponder that a bit. And he was just one among thousands of kings. Face it. We are ALL descended from guys like that.)
Seriously, can anybody plausibly argue that this was not the recurring pattern from continent to continent, in nearly all complex human societies? Of course, organized religion often played a vital role. Clerics all-too often strove to justify this power-gathering, to chant and rationalize and convince peasants that allocation by the mighty was best for all. (Do not take this as an anti-religious rant. Justification of hierarchy was a priestly role quite independent of the more honorable, pastoral and religious tasks performed by sincere holy men and women. Alas, lamentably, these separate roles tended to get bunched together in many cultures.)
Hence, GAR (guided allocation of resources) was not unique to socialism -- not a matter of "left versus right." Rather, it appears to be the principal pattern of historical economies around the world. A pattern that spanned at least 40 centuries, during which real markets seldom lasted very long without profound and relentless interference, favoritism and meddling "from above."
(This, indeed, was the greatest complaint of Adam Smith and the biggest reason why the patron saint of capitalism was a "liberal.")
Tragically, one effect seemed nearly always to result from this pattern. That which benefits the leadership class seldom correlates with good statecraft. When given a choice between progress for everybody and enrichment of the oligarchy, which policy do you think was implemented in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Mycennae, Chin, Kamakura, Rome, Zimbabwe, Tahiti, Russia, Great Britain...?
Again, I do not have to prove any of this. All I have to do is put forward a challenge. Find exceptions! Across twenty years of making this one point, in public and in print far and wide, I have only heard mentioned THREE potential exceptions -- brief and minor ones -- to this relentless pattern, across the entire human historical record. And a sad story it is.
I should point out that collusive cheating is only the first of several flaws, inherent in the notion of guided allocation.
The second flaw was almost as great -- imperfect human knowledge of complex systems. Even when ruling elites tried to govern judiciously, for the the good of all, generation after generation of wise guys fell for the same alluring trap... the same delusion... believing that they understood society, morality, physical law, and economics well enough to allocate effectively.
But history shows they were all mistaken. Every last one of them. Complexity and imperfect knowledge are the gremlins that haunted kings, even when societies were far simpler than they are now.
Of course, I am not the first to point this out. Nobel-winning economist F.A. Hayek dealt decisively with the problem of imperfect knowledge, offering a convincing line of explanation for why reliable command over any economy always wriggles and slips out of our grasp.
This lesson applies not only to ancient Greece and China... or to the calamities of Soviet-style state planning... but even to sophisticated modern managers. Take the recent history of "Japan Inc." Back in their heyday, the Lords of MITI pursued that ancient dream of top-down allocation with a vengeance. Moreover, it sure seemed successful for a while! Using techniques far more sophisticated than the Politburo and incorporating many capitalist tools, they assumed that their economic models, and especially thoughtful allocation of bottomless lines of credit to favored industries, would succeed far better than "random" open markets. Indeed, those sophisticated models and plans worked... for a while.
Till complexity and imperfect knowledge wreaked inevitable vengeance. (I was among the few, in the 1980s, to predict this.)
Here is a sad sermon taught by the ages:
GAR may be a natural way for societies to organize. But GAR does not deal well with surprise.
Still, the ancient dream of guided allocation will not die. The neo-confucian leaders of China are following it today, attempting to rise above the mistakes made earlier by feudal, communist and MITI allocating castes. Indeed, let us all admit that they are achieving respectable wonders, so far. Impressive stuff.
Still, are they human?
Then it seems all-but certain that complexity and surprise will play their old tricks at some point,
yanking the rug out from under even the cleverest allocators, once again.
In contrast to guided allocation, genuinely liberated markets have a very short history.
Yes, great Pericles spoke in their favor, and not only of economic markets, but also markets of knowledge, ideas, policy and law (e.g. democracy.) Alas, the notion was new and difficult to implement in lasting ways. It was also deeply unpopular among tyrants and oligarchs, who unleashed every weapon against that fragile, early experiment. Moreover, once the pericleans were quashed, aristocrats in every subsequent culture relentlessly subsidized and promulgated Plato and his followers, who made it their business to defend top-down hierarchy with utter tenacity, for close to 2500 years.
Guided allocation remained king - literally - during all that time. A long and daunting epoch of failure and pain.
That is, until Adam Smith and John Locke began drawing our eyes once again toward the Periclean dream. Toward what we moderns might call the "wisdom of empowered crowds."
Their core notion? That human beings -- all of us -- are inherently delusional self-deceivers, rationalizers and cheaters. (Duh!) Hence, no elite group can be trusted to allocate resources fairly, or to rule wisely with unbalanced or unaccountable monopolies of power. No, not even the elites YOU happen to admire. Not even them. Not even you. Not even me.
Rather, Smith, Locke, Franklin and their enlightenment peers offered a radical notion. If you empower the masses to act individually, as fully knowledgeable citizens, each person transacting on his or her own behalf, then their differences may add up to strength. The strength and creative power of reciprocal accountability (RA) -- applied en masse -- to detect and counter a great many foolish errors. Unwise and immature individuals can be be much wiser in aggregate, especially when a dollop of mutual suspicion lets them cancel out each others' worst tendencies -- the malignant, predatory devils of human nature -- leaving the angels of fair competition and cooperation to thrive. The guiding concept? To escape the era of kingly delusion, replacing it with an open give-and-take. Above all, letting no one escape criticism.
(Pause: Which is more "naive"... the idealization I just described? Or an obstinate refusal to recognize that this plan worked? Not perfectly. But far, far better than every other kingly, priestly or ritual-laden prescription since humanity lived in trees?)
Not only is this innovation the wellspring of "suspicion of authority" -- a central foundation of the US Constitution. (And a lot of mass media!) It is also the the basic wisdom underlying modern markets. Instead of a single, coherent economic plan, declared top-down by fallible leaders, a market deals with the problems of complexity by unleashing a tool that is... well... complex! A whole society of sovereign individuals.
(For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition for Society's Benefit."
This is the core premise underpinning our pragmatic or "liberal" wing of the Enlightenment. A suspicion toward hierarchy and belief in dispersed authority that has proved its effectiveness during a narrow, 200 year window when -- coincidentally? -- humanity has managed to multiply its knowledge, wealth, health, prosperity and happiness by orders of magnitude beyond what had been achieved by all the kings and priests and command allocators of old.
Putting aside deluded romantic-nostalgia about the "wisdom of ancient tribes," there can be no rational doubt that the notions of Pericles and Smith and Locke and Hayek are proved.
Well? Are you confused yet? One moment I seem to be veering left, then right! I may seem fickle and inconsistent...
...but that is an illusion. There is a very consistent story here. Hang in there... and shrug off the cliches.
So Brin rejects the "guided allocation" practiced by kings and commissars. Does that mean we should all pray instead to the inherent wisdom of blind markets? Have I picked sides in the furious modern debate between FIBM and GAR, choosing Huber and Mills and Simon and Lomberg?
Gah! Fie upon dichotomies!
I refuse to be pigeonholed. Especially when the dichotomy is a trick. When it is a trap
All right, then. Let's take a closer look at this great dichotomy. One that (we're told) maps neatly upon the hoary old "left-right political axis". A dichotomy between the standard human modus operandi - guided allocation - and the newcomer - faith in blind markets.
My claim? That we have been distracted, far too long, by a failure to parse this great debate properly. So let me try to offer a set of encsapsulated key points. And then I'll kick over the chessboard, pointing out that it was never a dichotomy at all!
==Point #1. Reiterating: the approach called Guided Allocation of Resources (GAR) is not specifically socialistic. Rather, it is essentially oligarchic. In principle, communist commissars were no better - or worse - than any other narrow conspiratorial elite of power grabbing cheaters.
==Point #2. The fallacy is just as severe in the opposite direction! Any true historian of both economics and politics will tell you that open markets and liberated citizen accountability are the greatest liberal inventions. They were radical, revolutionary, anti-monarchy, anti-oligarchic and reformist. In other words, we are all better off dropping the "left-right" nonsense, when comparing guided allocation to faith in markets. It is simply a poison to clear thinking.
==Point #3. Thus, when "market promoters" rightly point out the great flaws of GAR, aren't they hypocrites to wag their fingers in just one direction? They should shine that critical light on all economy-controlling cabals. Are collusive, price-fixing monopolists more inherently wise and trustworthy than commissars, or feudal lords, or other narrow groups of would-be "allocators"? Aren't all types more similar to each other than radicals of left or right would ever choose to admit?
==Point #4. Even more generally, are not large corporations, in themselves, examples of top-down allocation hierarchies, replicating in-miniature, the rigidity, poor modeling and frequent self-interested cheating that were displayed by kings and commisars? Picture an imperious CEO as royalty! Isn't the parallel creepy and also... well... rather banal? Even unsurprising?
Yes, competition between major corporations should keep these allocation-centers lean, mean and efficient, while markets supply the essential element of wisdom via supply and demand. (Historians believe that competition between fractious and divided European nations had the same effect during and after the Renaissance, leading to their rapid technological innovation and subsequent conquest of the world. Still, that did not make them internally open. Or intrinsically wise.)
Anyway, note the word "should." No matter how well-motivated a company is, driven by external competition, a dilemma remains: if corporations utilize command hierarchies similar to kingdoms, won't they -- don't they -- emulate some of the same faults? From leader-egomania and leader conflict-of-interest to relying on a single mind (or small group of minds) to deal with ineffable complexity?
==Point #5. Those who (correctly) see the flaws and faults of guided allocation can easily fall into a logical trap -- positing that the wise opposite of GAR is Faith in Blind Markets (FIBM).
Indeed, some take the notion of market "blindness" quite seriously, propounding that societies should never meddle in the free interaction of market players (corporations and individuals). Any attempt at "guidance" -- by (for example) government regulation -- must automatically be rejected, as a matter of basic principle.
In other words, because we have learned that GAR (all capital letters) stinks as a general system, that means we must flee as far as we can, to extremes in the diametric direction! We should reject any use of "gar" (lower case) tools to help markets work better. In extremum, this teaching calls upon us to reject the entire suite of problem-solving methodologies that involve political deliberation, prioritizing and allocating a certain fraction of social resources toward the accomplishment of thoroughly considered and democratically-chosen consensus goals.
Not only is blindness good -- (goes this hyper-libertarian concept) -- but any attempt by society to "see" -- and to act upon that foresight -- is automatically dismissed as bad.
Um, has anyone else pondered the unbelievable reductio meaning of this cult incantation? That an ideal human society should make little or no use of our great facility for planing and foresight?
Individuals may peer ahead. Corporations are allowed to do so. Aristocrats may do so in small collusive groups and in secret. But en-masse we must spurn our hard-won propensity for gedankenexperiment and precautionary action!
Astonishingly, those who seek a fetishistic opposite to GAR seem to be declaring faith and fealty to a new godhead. A non-promethean deity who demands quiet from humanity's collective prefrontal lobes. In blithe and devout expectation of externally-delivered salvation, they pray to an idol of mass-social unsapience.
==Point #6. True, what I just described is an extreme version of FIBM. Even Huber and Mills would call for some government-led allocation, I presume. Space telescopes and medical research. Certainly public assumption of countless liabilities so that profits can be privatized.
Still, the devil is not in the details. He lurks in the passion and extreme attitudes of these partisans... and in their cryptic loyalties. As I alluded earlier, when I spoke of techno-transcendentalists who pledge faith in simplistic models, there is clearly something going on here at the level of personality. A desperate need for some all-encompassing magical and simplistic formula.
Take the popular libertarian slogan: "market laws are natural laws." Alas, like most slogans, it is poorly supported in the light of history or human nature. When challenged, supporters can cite few examples of thriving markets that existed in the past, free of oligarchic GAR. Market laws are natural laws? One might imagine that something so natural would have actually happened at least once, during those long dark ages before the Enlightenment.
==Point #7. Yes, fecund markets have happened since the Enlightenment. Not only markets of commerce, but other "accountability arenas" of science, democracy and law have all successfully diverted the incessant human penchant for competition, channeling it away from cheating and predation, instead harnessing it toward the pursuit of factual truth, justice and unprecedented creativity in the delivery of goods and services.
Rather than manifestations of natural law, these four creative arenas far more closely resemble finely tuned machines that have been hand-built by countless sincere men and women, across several centuries. These machines are not "unguided." Rather, they are guided with a new goal in mind -- the empowerment of individual competitive and cooperative opportunity.
A myriad rules and procedures have been enacted, in much the same way that automotive engineers invented valves and cams and pulleys and gears... that are now being replaced in our cars by computer-controlled injectors and actuators. A similar process of fine-tuning and replacement takes place in a modern society as outdated laws and regulations get replaced. Some of these arena rules were (and are) overly-ornate. Some are even deeply stupid. Others are pragmatic, having arisen out of hard experience, with the aim of helping to harness human competitive-cooperative energy better than before.
Oh, it isn't pretty. An excessive plethora of parts. Feedback loops that struggle and shove against each other. Filthy, corruption-ridden contradictions. Parasites abound and oh, the steering mechanism! Don't get me started on the steering mechanism. Anyone who has a sense of style must be regularly shocked and offended by our messy civilization.
Ah, but anybody with awareness of human history or human nature, has to be amazed that the machinery works at all.
No wonder extreme ideologues of both GAR and FIBM have no patience for all this gritty complexity. The former want the engine put under total conscious control. The latter cling to a magical notion that we got our motors of commerce, science and law without any vision or planning at all.
The core point that must emerge -- that the rest of us must deal with, in coming years -- is just how deeply unhelpful both of these extreme world views really are. How fixated, inflexible... and borderline insane.
==Point #8. And profoundly, prodigiously dishonest!
Not only do radical preachers of FIBM try desperately to divert attention from history's great fact -- that guided allocation of resources (GAR) is just as relentlessly a fault of aristocratism and capitalism, as it is of socialism. Far worse, Huber and Mills -- along with others like Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg -- appear to be either willingly complicit or pathetically unaware that FIBM has become a mantra in service of those who want state authority removed... so that decisions about resource and production allocation can be taken over by other oligarchies.
By other groups that are inherently even less accountable than elected governments. Groups bent on re-creating patterns of hierarchy that are as old as human civilization.
Indeed, it is precisely in the area that most interests Huber and Mills -- energy policy -- that we have lately seen narrow groups of powerful and well-connected men seizing secretive and collusive allocation-authority, free of almost any kind of accountability. Men who decry governmental allocators... then apply every trick of bribery and influence to use government as a tool for power and wealth accumulation. Men who call themselves geniuses, yet have proved themselves to be little better than Louis XVI at guiding civilization on the path of foresight, innovation, error-correction and success.
Men who would read the previous paragraph and instantly hurl cries of "socialist!" in my direction, in order to distract from the paragraph's blatant, obvious - and essentially apolitical - truth. (But you know I'm no socialist.)
This is the central hypocrisy of today's pulpit-thumpers and preachers of Faith in Blind Markets. If they were sincere, they would not only want to lessen government's hand on the economy. They would also be fervent devotees of anti-trust action to disperse every bloated, conspiratorial accumulation of power, knowing that GAR is an enemy of market wisdom, even (especially!) when the hands wielding it are corporate and aristocratic, instead of do-gooder liberal regulators.
Alas, the myopia of FIBM has gone so far that the Cato Institute, supposedly a bastion of pro-market libertarian thought, has turned into the central locus of jesuitical rationalization for a return to feudal aristocratism. There is no market distortion too obscene to support, so long as the beneficiaries are oligarchs, rather than liberal paternalists.
==Point #9. And yet, lest I seem unbalanced, let me turn the other way and make clear that the FIBM rightwing has no monopoly on desperately self-serving myopia and oversimplification!
If FIBM is a betrayal of Smith and Locke, what can we say about the would-be world-savers who would ignore every lesson that we have learned about the fallacy of GAR? Many on the left truly are far-socialistic in their inclinations. They see the abuses and feral power-grubbing of aristocratic cheaters and conclude that capitalism itself is at fault... when those cheaters are the very worst enemies of true free enterprise!
Why are many reformers unable to make this distinction?
Again, I believe it is a matter of personality, far more than fact or evidence. They see a world that is filled with folly and pain. They sincerely believe that this folly and pain can be solved simply by allocating resources, tasks, capital, labor and endeavor in the right ways. I mean, what could be more obvious? Wasn't this obvious to the rulers of every other civilization?
It would take wit, insight and incredible perspective for many of them to pull back and admit: "Wait... I am prescribing the very thing I should hate. What I really ought to want are genuinely liberal markets, in which the state ensures that all players get to know and negotiate and play the great creative game from a level playing field. Yes, that will mean some "allocating" to raise up poor children to be ABLE to compete well. And yes we must allocate to take into account the needs of generations yet to come. But the thing I am devoted to is not allocation, per se! The thing I am dedicated to is giving all people (including those yet to come) a fair chance to play."
==point 10. What can we conclude?
It is a pretty rough and devastating denunciation.
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If you are confused, don't be daunted. We have been trying hard to look at familiar cliches afresh, from unusual points of view. And what we have seen is perplexing, complicated, maybe even a bit scary.
Please. I am not saying that all enterprise capitalists are hypocrites. Nor are all liberal reformers deep-down socialist meddlers. Indeed, a vast majority on both sides are not!
Most of us are trying hard to keep faith with the Enlightenment goal of pragmatic problem solving, using an eclectic mix of "right and left-handed tools" from competitive market innovation to reasonable social cooperation. From the quasi-random, supply-demand stimulation of goods and services to the kind of government regulations that tune markets, so that all reasonable costs are paid by the same generation that reaps the immediate benefits. (Instead of passing those costs on to our descendants.)
Indeed, it is that quiet and earnest majority who I am addressing in this article. Because the radicals of FIBM and GAR will not have lasted up to this point. Because they will have already dismissed this as a rant that evades accepted terminology. This essay proves me to be a "socialist"... or else a libertarian "tool of plutocrats." Or a wishy-washy oscillator, rudderless and without principles.
But, again, you know better.
Huber and Mills are probably right that the creativity of millions of unleashed human minds will be applied to problem-solving in the years ahead, to an extent that we'll find unprecedented and dazzling. Perhaps even enough to bring the positive singularity.
On the other hand, history shows that we have absolutely no basis for blindly trusting that creative cornucopia explosion to happen all by itself! The engendering of those creative millions is too serious and important a task to leave to such a simple dogma! Especially to a blithe nostrum, that has no support in the long history of nations.
True, hierarchical guided allocation proved dangerous and stupid countless times in the past. But not when it has been applied toward well-focused tasks that enhance the capability of millions of human beings to become sagacious individual citizens and market participants! Our universities and internets and democracies and civil rights and commercial codes and free education and subsidized roads and nutrition programs and countless other measures that mitigated the tendency of society to slump into a pyramidal hierarchy of inherited privilege. By helping each generation of kids to believe - in some confidence - that they are able to innovate and cooperate and joyfully compete, we created the world's first diamond-shaped society.
And we did it using judicious dollops of carefully considered gar... (lower case)... not GAR.
If the left is never satisfied in pushing for such things, sometimes forgetting what they are for, the right has no claim to be smug. They take all of these things (like civil rights) for granted, glad to accept the benefits, forgetting that conservatives fought against every last one of them, and now resist every new fine-tuning that might help the great cornucopian machine to work better.
Indeed, while I am a passionate believer in the reciprocal accountability principle of Pericles and Smith and Locke - (as evidenced by my book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force Us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?) - I cannot turn this pragmatic appreciation into cult belief in a quasi religious version, a caricature of what they taught.
Faith in Blind Markets (FIBM) is neither scientific nor steadfast to the essentially pragmatic mindset of the Lockean Enlightenment.
Nor is the recurring notion of socialist allocation a suitable replacement for a dismally predictable oligarchic conspiracy.
All of these are just slightly re-clothed versions of GAR.
They are crutches for weak thinkers... or else manipulative tools exploited by those who want to be our masters.
They are dismal tales that grab and clutch at us out of the past, unsuitable for sophisticated citizens of an agile and complex and fast-moving Third Millennium.
See more: The Economy Past, Present and Future


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My grandfather, Pop, passed away on Christmas Eve. Over the last couple years, he had steadily declined. His short-term memory had completely disintegrated. Pop couldn't remember the last time we had talked, but his intelligence and spirit remained till the end.
I last spoke with him a couple weeks ago. We talked about who he'd be voting for — Bernie Sanders — and how his favorite stocks were performing. After I asked these questions, I silently cried on the phone. I realized he'd likely not make another election cycle. He was all out of votes after 92 years of life.
Pop and I spent most times talking about politics, economics, and relationships. I shared countless moments across from him in his reading nook. He sat on a donut pillow for hemorrhoids; although, he didn't have them anymore. His mug sat on a hot plate and was covered with a small plate. He savoured and sipped every ounce of tea or coffee. It was here that learning was done.
He was the single largest impact on my economic and social beliefs. I read Marx after he extolled the virtues of communism. I didn't necessarily agree with it all, but that wasn't what was important. In discourse, he gave me the tools to debate politely and disagree adamantly. And he opened my eyes to prejudice, social justice, and financial inequities.
At 17, he enlisted in the Army Air Corps (precursor to the Air Force) and flew some 30+ missions over France and Germany. As a Jew, he received maltreatment from those he served and fought. It wasn't easy service. He shared experiences talking with broken Yiddish (an old, Germanic language) to German prisoners of war. Pop wanted to learn about them. This was a perfect example of his social respect for others — no matter how "bad" they were.
Later in life, he made a friend who worked for a biopharmaceutical company who recommended Biogen Idec. After contemplating the scientific merits of the company and their products, he made an investment. It paid many times over for the last couple decades. Pop wasn't a financial genius, but he consistently made smart decisions that put his family and future first. It allowed him to retire to a small apartment complex and enjoy the smell of fresh Santa Monica air.
Years and years of conversations with him cemented an emphasis for economic and social justice in me. As a child of the Great Depression, his perspective was forever changed. In current society, Pop didn't like that vast amounts of wealth were being siphoned from the majority of people. He disliked that politicians weren't doing enough to protect the average, everyday American. Taxes were a social good — it prevented a select group from pillaging from others in need.
I silently said goodbye to him in summer 2015, when I visited. But he would live a few more months before passing. Frankly, it's hard to capture him in a list of "10 financial lessons from my grandfather," but as one of the biggest influences on my life, I couldn't help but say a few words to honor him.
Pop, thank you for editing my first journalistic endeavors, hugging me so tightly, brilliant financial lessons, giving the best stock-picking advice, tutoring me on Jewish culture and the Yiddish language, always having Manischewitz matzos, providing a near-endless list of dessert options after dinner, sharing the joy of Bangaleri birds, educating me on Freud and Marx, encouraging my academic endeavors when I struggled to see the light, and being proud of me. I knew you meant it, and I'll miss your excitement on the phone after I'd say, "Hey Pop! It's Sam."
You've given me a debt of gratitude that I'll forever try to pay forward.
As we always said, it's time to say "chachalakas." I hate that it's time, but we must.
So, with tear-filled eyes, chachalakas, Pop.
Your grandson and friend, Sam