by Dean Vandruff

“LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT AN INCREDIBLE ground-level business opportunity…” someone says, and you are invited to a house or to lunch for “a discussion.” Funny enough, you feel in your gut that there is some hidden agenda or deception. “Probably a multi-level marketing (MLM) organization,” you think. Suppose it is? Should you trust your instincts? Is there anything wrong with MLM?

This article will analyze four problem areas with MLM. Specifically, it will focus on problems of I) Market Saturation, II) Pyramid Structure, III) Morality and Ethics, and IV) Relationship Issues associated with MLMs. Thus, you can properly assess your “instincts.”

I. Market Saturation: An Inherent Problem

Back to the Basics

A tutorial on market saturation hardly seems necessary in most business discussions, but with MLM, unfortunately, it is. Common sense seems to get suspended when considering if MLMs are viable, even theoretically, as a profitable means of distribution for all parties involved. This suspension is created by a heightened expectation of “easy money,” but more on that later.

New, Innovative?

MLM can no longer claim to be new and, thus, exempt from the normal rules of the market and the way goods and services are sold. They have been tried and, for the most part, have failed. Some have been miserable failures in spite of offering excellent products.

Marketing innovations are not rare in the modern world, as evidenced by the success of Wal-Mart, which found a more efficient and profitable way to distribute goods and services than the status quo, providing lasting value to stockholders, employees, distributors, and consumers. But this is not the case with any MLM to date, and after 25 years of failed attempts, it is time to point out the reasons why.

Don’t Some People Make Money in MLM?

First, we will analyze the “driving mechanism” of MLMs. We will detail how they are intrinsically unstable, guaranteed by design to oversaturate the market with no one noticing. We will look at why MLMs can never equalize into profitability the way companies in the real world can, so that the result will be that the organization as a whole cannot, even in theory, be profitable. When this inevitable destiny occurs, the only money to be made is not from the product or service but from the losses of people lower down in the organization.

Thus the MLM organization becomes exploitative, and many high-level MLM promoters have been shut down, the “executives” incarcerated, for selling the fraud of impossible success to others. Other, larger, MLMs have survived by hiring large batteries of attorneys to ward off federal prosecutors, even bragging about the funds they have in reserve for this purpose.

The unfortunate “distributor” at the bottom is the loser, and once this becomes apparent beyond all the slick videos and motivational pep-talks, good people start to get a bad taste in their mouths about the whole situation.

So, yes, money can be made with MLM. The question is whether the money being made is legitimate or “made” via a sophisticated con scheme. And if MLM is “doomed by design” to fail, then the answer is, unfortunately, the latter.

But how exactly does this happen, and must it always?

Doomed by Design?

The first question is this: Is any company choosing this marketing strategy destined to fail, to degenerate into an exploitative venture, regardless of how good the product is?

To see this clearly we must go through an, otherwise, obvious and elementary discussion of how any business must be careful not to overhire, overextend, or oversupply a market.

The Real World

Any business must carefully consider supply and demand. For example, if the ReVo Corporation thinks that it will have a full-fledged fad on their ovoid sunglasses next summer, perhaps they should plan to build and distribute, say, 10M units. This involves gearing up factories, setting up distribution and dealer networks, and carefully managing the inventories at each level so that ReVo will still have credibility with their distributors, retail outlets, and the public the following year.

If it turns out that there is a “run” on ReVo products, and they sell out in mid-June, then they have miscalculated demand and will miss out on profits they could have made. The more serious problem, however, is overestimating the saturation point for the product. If they make 10M units, and sell only 2M units, this may be the end of ReVo as a company.

The all-too-obvious point here is that management of supply and demand, and keen insight into realistic market penetration and saturation are crucial to any business, for any product or service. Mismanagement of this aspect of a business will eclipse good market access, excellent product design, human resource assets, production quality, and so on. Simply stated, a failure to “hit the target” of supply and demand can ruin a company if the market is oversaturated.

Market Dynamics and the End of the Cold War

Interestingly, the issue of supply and demand is what brought the USSR to its knees. By design, the Soviet government tried to macro-manage supply, where bureaucrats would decide how many potatoes were needed, how much toilet paper, etc. Assuming these bureaucrats did the best they could, unfortunately their efforts to deliberately manipulate the control “knob” of supply and demand was not good enough. Notwithstanding their good intentions, they were usually wrong, which created huge shortages and surpluses, and led to a massive economic collapse.

Seeing the disastrous end of market naiveté in Russia should help clarify the fundamental problem with the MLM approach. In the real world, the profit of a company is directly related to the skill and prescience of the “hand” on the “supply knob,” so to speak. In the USSR, that “hand” could not react fast or accurately enough to market realities through the best efforts of the bureaucrats.

With MLMs, the situation is much worse. Nobody is home. Even the Soviets had someone thinking about how much was enough! If the bureaucrat in Russia was having a hard time trying to play Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” in setting the supply level in the Soviet Union, then an MLM “executive” is in a truly unfortunate position. Not only is there no one assigned to make the decision of how much is enough, the MLM is set up by design to blindly go past the saturation point and keep on going. It will grow until it collapses under its own weight, without even a bureaucrat noticing.

MLM is like a train with no brakes and no engineer headed full-throttle towards a terminal.

“Everyone Will Want to Buy This Product!”

All products and services have partial market penetration. For example, only so many people wish to use a discount broker, as evidenced by the very successful but only partial market penetration of Charles Schwab. Not everyone wishes to join a particular discount club, or buy gold, or drink filtered water, or wear a particular style of shoe, or use any product or service. No one in the real world of business would seriously consider the thin arguments of the MLMers when they flippantly mention the infinite market need for their product or services.

The Demand Problem: Of Widgets and MLMs

Imagine a neat new product called a Widget that will sell for $100 (a fixed price, to keep it simple). Now, while everyone could use a Widget, not everyone will. Some will be afraid of anything new. Some will be loyal to existing brands. Some will want to buy an inferior product for less money. Some will want a more expensive product for prestige, regardless of quality. The reasons go on and on, and the fact is that only “X” Widgets will sell at $100.

The question for would-be marketers is: What is the quantity “X,” and how can it be predicted to maximize profits? The fact that “X” is hard to pin down does not mean that it does not exist, and every Widget built beyond “X” will end up producing a problem for the organization. The market only wants “X” Widgets at $100. What are you going to do with your extra inventory of Widgets beyond “X” that no one wants — and the sales people you hired to sell them?

No one can perfectly predict “X,” and the situation is not nearly as simple as considered here, but the objective for marketers is to forecast “X” as closely as possible in order to provide lasting value to all parties involved: to avoid missed opportunities as well as waste, loss, or failure.

The MLM Forecasting Approach: Ignoring the Target

Who has an eye on “X,” the point of market saturation at a given price, in an MLM? Well, the funny thing, or perhaps the tragic thing, is that “X” will be reached and exceeded without anyone noticing or caring.

Let’s just suppose that “X” has been reached today in a particular MLM; the number of possible units sold at this price has just been exceeded, and you happen to be a starry-eyed prospect sitting in an MLM meeting listening to the pitch. Now consider: Does anyone in this company know about “X”? Does anyone care? Is the issue being suppressed on purpose for some other motive? Since we are supposing that the market saturation number “X” has been reached, everyone joining the MLM from now on is buying into a false hope. But that is not what the speaker will be saying. He will be telling you, “Now is the time to join. Get in on the ‘ground floor’.” But it is all a lie, even though the speaker may not know it. The total available market “X” has been reached and nobody noticed. All the distributors will lose from here on out. Could this be you? How could you possibly know at what point you will become the liar in an MLM?

Pop or Drop

Perhaps a better paradigm than the runaway train analogy offered earlier of how MLMs perform over time is this: a helium balloon let loose in an empty room with a spiked ceiling, where product quality is analogous to the amount of helium. The better the product, the faster the balloon will rise, accelerating unhindered, towards disaster. The other option would be the case of a lousy product, in which case the balloon will sink of its own accord, never getting off the ground. To be sure, equilibrium is not in the cards, except perhaps as an accident, and then only temporarily. MLMs are intrinsically unstable. For any company that chooses an MLM approach, it’s pop or drop.

MLMs vs. the Real World

The basic question that needs to be asked is this: If this product or service is so great, then why isn’t it being sold through the customary marketing system that has served human society for thousands of years? Why does it need to resort to a “special marketing” scheme like an MLM? Why does everyone need to be so inexperienced at marketing this? Is the product just a thin cover for what is really a pyramid scheme of exploiting others? But more on that later.

From Contracted, Protected Distribution… to Mayhem

Imagine that Wendy’s became suddenly possessed by the idea that “everyone needs to eat,” and opened four Wendy’s franchises on the four corners of an intersection in your neighborhood. Who would benefit from this folly? The consumer? Certainly not the franchises; they would all lose. Wendy’s corporate? Perhaps temporarily, by speculative inventory sales while the unfortunate franchises were under the delusion that they could all make money. But in the end, the negative image of four outlets dying a slow death would likely offset the temporary inventory sales bubble. Even the most unreflective of the hapless franchisees would think twice about doing business in such a manner again. This is why real-world distributorships and franchises are contractually protected by territory and/or market.

Again, the simple fact is that even the most successful products will have partial market penetration. The same is true for services. Demand and “market share” are finite, and to overestimate either is catastrophic.

So why are MLM promoters obscuring this? Who is in control of the supply “knob,” carefully and skillfully managing the size of the distribution channels, number of salespeople, inventory, etc., to insure the success of all involved in the business? The truth is chilling: nobody.

Imagine trying to write a computer model of how MLMs work, and you will see this point most vividly. An MLM could never work, even in theory. Think about it.

The People Machine

Chernobyl had a control system that failed. MLMs have no control mechanisms at all.

Where is the “switch” that can be flipped in an MLM when enough sales people are hired? In a normal company a manager says, “We have enough, let’s stop hiring people at this point.” But in an MLM, there is no way to do this. An MLM is a human churning machine with no “off” button. Out of control by design, its gears will grind up the money, time, credibility, and entrepreneurial energy of well-meaning people who joined merely to supplement their income. Better to just steer clear of this monster to begin with.

There is simply no way to avoid the built-in failure mechanism of MLMs. If a company chooses to market this way, it will eventually “hire” (with no base pay — and charging to join) far too many people.

Thus, the only “control system” will be the inevitable losses and subsequent bad image the MLM company will gain after it does what it was designed to do: fail. And sooner or later we have got to stop blaming this particular MLM company or that, and admit that the MLM technique itself is fundamentally flawed.

Read more of this article at Dean Vandruff’s page

by Edgar Allan Poe

Hey, diddle diddle,
The cat and the fiddle

SINCE THE world began there have been two Jeremys. The one wrote a Jeremiad about usury, and was called Jeremy Bentham. He has been much admired by Mr. John Neal, and was a great man in a small way. The other gave name to the most important of the Exact Sciences, and was entitled Jeremy Diddler. He was a great man in a great way – I may say, indeed, in the very greatest of ways.

Diddling – or the abstract idea conveyed by the verb to diddle – is sufficiently well understood. Yet the fact, the deed, the thing diddling, is somewhat difficult to define. We may get, however, at a tolerably distinct conception of the matter in hand, by defining – not the thing, diddling, in itself – but man, as an animal that diddles. Had Plato but hit upon this, he would have been spared the affront of the picked chicken.

Very pertinently it was demanded of Plato, why a picked chicken, which was clearly “a biped without feathers,” was not, according to his own definition, a man? But I am not to be bothered by any similar query. Man is an animal that diddles, and there is no animal that diddles but man. It will take an entire hen-coop of picked chickeus [chickens] to get over that.

What constitutes the essence, the ware, the principle of diddling is, in fact, peculiar to the class of creatures that wear coats and pantaloons. A crow thieves; a fox cheats; a weasel outwits; a man diddles. To diddle is his destiny. “Man was made to mourn,” says the poet. But not so: – he was made to diddle. This is his aim – his object – his end. And for this reason when a man’s diddled we say he’s “done.”

Diddling, rightly considered, is a compound, of which the ingredients are minuteness, interest, perseverance, ingenuity, audacity, nonchalance, originality, impertinence, and grin.

Minuteness: – Your diddler is minute. His operations are upon a small scale. His business is retail, for cash, or approved paper at sight. Should he ever be tempted into magnificent speculation, he then, at once, loses his distinctive features, and becomes what we term a “financier.” This latter word conveys the diddling idea in every respect except that of magnitude. A diddler may thus be regarded as a banker in petto – a “financial operation,” as a diddle at Brobdignag. The one is to the other as a Mastodon to a mouse –   as the tail of a comet to that of a pig – as Homer to Flaccus – as the “Iliad” to “Sam Patch.”.

Interest: – Your diddler is guided by self-interest. He scorns to diddle for the mere sake of the diddle. He has an object in view – his pocket – and yours. He regards always the main chance. He looks to Number One. You are Number Two, and must look to yourself.

Perseverance: – Your diddler perseveres. He is not readily discouraged. Should even the banks break, he cares nothing about it. He steadily pursues his end, and Ut camis a corio nunquam absterrebitur uncto, so he never lets go of his game.

Ingenuity: – Your diddler is ingenious. He has constructiveness large. He understands plot. He  invents and circumvents. Were he not Alexander, he would be Diogenes. Were he not what he is, he would be a maker of patent rat-traps or an angler for trout.

Audacity: – Your diddler is audacious. He is a bold man. He carries the war into Africa. He conquers all by assault. He would not fear the daggers of Frey Harren. With a little more prudence Dick Turpin would have made a good diddler; with a trifle less blarney, Daniel O’Connell, with a pound or two more brains, Charles the Twelfth.

Nonchalance: – Your diddler is nonchalant. He is not at all nervous. He never had any nerves – He is never seduced into a flurry. He is never put out – unless put out of doors. He is cool – cool as a cucumber. He is calm – “calm as a smile from Lady Bury.” He is easy – easy as an old glove, or the damsels of ancient Baiæ.

Originality: – Your diddler is original – conscientiously so. His thoughts are his own. He would scorn to employ those of another. A stale trick is his aversion. He would return a purse, I am sure, upon discovering that he had obtained it by an unoriginal diddle.

Impertinence: – Your diddler is impertinent. He swaggers. He sets his arms a-kimbo. He thrusts his hands in his trowsers’ pockets. He sneers in your face. He treads on your corns. He eats your dinner, he drinks your wine, he borrows your money, he pulls your nose, he kicks your poodle, and he kisses your wife.

Grin: – Your true diddler winds up all with a grin. But this nobody sees but himself. He grins when his daily work is done – when his allotted labors are accomplished – at night – in his own closet, and altogether for his own private entertainment. He goes home. He locks his door. He divests himself of his clothes. He puts out his candle. He gets into bed. He places his head upon the pillow. All this done, and your diddler grins. This is no hypothesis. It is a matter of course. I reason a priori, and a diddle would be no diddle without a grin.

The origin of the diddle is referrable to the infancy of the Human Race. Perhaps the first diddler was Adam. At all events, we can trace the science back to a very remote period of antiquity. The moderns, however, have brought it to a point of perfection never dreamed of by our thick-headed progenitors. – Without pausing to speak of the “old saws,” therefore, I shall content myself with a compendious account of some of the more “modern instances.”

A very good diddle is this. A housekeeper in want of a sofa, for instance, is seen to go in and out of several cabinet warehouses. At length she arrives at one offering an excellent variety. She is accosted, and invited to enter, by a polite and voluble individual at the door. She finds a sofa well adapted to her views, and, upon inquiring the price, is surprised and delighted to hear a sum named at least twenty per cent lower than her expectations. She hastens to make the purchase, gets a bill and receipt, leaves her address, with a request that the article be sent home as speedily as possible, and retires amid a profusion of bows from the shop-keeper. The night arrives and no sofa. A servant is sent to make inquiry about the delay. The whole transaction is denied. No sofa has been sold – no money received – except by the diddler, who played shop-keeper for the nonce.

Our cabinet warehouses are left entirely unattended, and thus afford every facility for a trick of this kind. Visitors enter, look at furniture, and depart unheeded and unseen. Should any one wish to purchase, or to inquire the price of an article, a bell is at hand, and this is considered amply sufficient.

Again, quite a respectable diddle is this. A well-dressed individual enters a shop; makes a purchase to the value of a dollar; finds, much to his vexation, that he has left his pocket-book in another coat pocket: and so says to the shop-keeper –

“My dear sir, never mind! – just oblige me, will you, by sending the parcel home? But stay! I really believe that I have nothing less than a five dollar bill, even there. However, you can send four dollars in change with the bundle, you know.”

“Very good, sir,” replies the shop-keeper, who entertains, at once, a lofty opinion of the high-mindedness of his customer. “I know fellows,” he says to himself, “who would just have put the goods under their arm, and walked off, with a promise to call and pay the dollar as they came by in the afternoon.”

A boy is sent with the parcel and change. On the route, quite accidentally, he is met by the purchaser, who exclaims:

“Ah! This is my bundle, I see – I thought you had been home with it long ago. Well, go on! My wife, Mrs. Trotter, will give you the five dollars – I left instructions with her to that effect. The change you might as well give to me – I shall want some silver for the Post Office. Very good! One, two, – is this a good quarter? – three, four – quite right! Say to Mrs. Trotter that you met me, and be sure now and do not loiter on the way.”

The boy doesn’t loiter at all – but he is a very long time in getting back from his errand – for no lady of the precise name of Mrs. Trotter is to be discovered. He consoles himself, however, that he has not been such a fool as to leave the goods without the money, and, re-entering his shop with a self-satisfied air, feels sensibly hurt and indignant when his master asks him what has become of the change.

A very simple diddle, indeed, is this. The captain of a ship which is about to sail, is presented by an official-looking personage, with an unusually moderate bill of city charges. Glad to get off so easily, and confused by a hundred duties pressing upon him all at once, he discharges the claim forthwith. In about fifteen minutes, another and less reasonable bill is handed him by one who soon makes it evident that the first collector was a diddler, and the original collection a diddle.

And here, too, is a somewhat similar thing. A steamboat is casting loose from the wharf. A traveller, portmanteau in hand, is discovered running towards the wharf at full speed. Suddenly, he makes a dead halt, stoops, and picks up something from the ground in a very agitated manner. It is a pocket-book, and – “Has any gentleman lost a pocketbook?” he cries. No one can say that he has exactly lost a pocket-book; but a great excitement ensues, when the treasure trove is found to be of value. The boat, however, must not be detained.

“Time and tide wait for no man,” says the captain.

“For God’s sake, stay only a few minutes,” says the finder of the book – “the true claimant will presently appear.”

“Can’t wait!” replies the man in authority; “cast off there, d’ye hear?”

“What am I to do?” asks the finder, in great tribulation. “I am about to leave the country for some years, and I cannot conscientiously retain this large amount in my possession. I beg your pardon, sir,” [here he addresses a gentleman on shore,] “but you have the air of an honest man. Will you confer upon me the favor of taking charge of this pocket-book – I know I can trust you – and of advertising it? The note, you see, amounts to a very considerable sum. The owner will, no doubt, insist upon rewarding you for your trouble – ”

“Me! – no. you! – it was you who found the book.”

“Well, if you must have it so – I will take a small reward – just to satisfy your scruples. Let me see – why these notes are all hundreds – bless my soul! a hundred is too much to take – fifty would be quite enough, I am sure – ”

“Cast off there!” says the captain.

“But then I have no change for a hundred, and upon the whole, you had better – ”

“Cast off there!” says the captain.

“Never mind!” cries the gentleman on shore, who has been examining his own pocket-book for the last minute, or so – “never mind! I can fix it – here is a fifty on the Bank of North America – throw me the book.”

And the over-conscientious finder takes the fifty with marked reluctance, and throws the gentleman the book, as desired, while the steamboat fumes and fizzes on her way. In about half an hour after her departure, the “large amount” is seen to be a “counterfeit presentment,” and the whole thing a capital diddle.

A bold diddle is this. A camp-meeting, or something similar, is to be held at a certain spot which is accessible only by means of a free bridge. A diddler stations himself upon this bridge, respectfully informs all passers by of the new county law, which establishes a toll of one cent for foot passengers, two for horses and donkeys, and so forth, and so forth. – Some grumble but all submit, and the diddler goes home a wealthier man by some fifty or sixty dollars well earned. This taking a toll from a great crowd of people is an excessively troublesome thing.

A neat diddle is this. A friend holds one of the diddler’s promises to pay, filled up and signed in due form, upon the ordinary blanks printed in red ink. – The diddler purchases one or two dozen of these blanks, and every day, at dinner, dips one of them in his soup, makes his dog jump for it, and finally gives it to him as a bonne bouche. The note arriving at maturity, the diddler, with the diddler’s dog, calls upon the friend, and the promise to pay is made the subject of discussion. The friend produces it from his escritoire, and is in the act of reaching it to the diddler, when up jumps the diddler’s dog and devours it forthwith. The diddler is not only surprised but vexed and incensed at the absurd behavior of his dog, and expresses his entire readiness to cancel the obligation at any moment when the evidence of the obligation shall be forthcoming.

A very minute diddle is this. A lady is insulted in the street by a diddler’s accomplice. The diddler himself flies to her assistance, and, giving his friend a comfortable thrashing, insists upon attending the lady to her own door. He bows, with his hand upon his heart, and most respectfully bidding her adieu. She entreats him, as her deliverer, to walk in and be introduced to her big brother and her papa. With a sigh, he declines to do so. “Is there no way, then, sir,” she murmurs, “in which I may be permitted to testify my gratitude?”

“Why, yes, madam, there is. Will you be kind enough to lend me a couple of shillings?”

In the first excitement of the moment the lady decides upon fainting outright. Upon second thought, however, she opens her purse-strings and delivers the specie. Now this, I say, is a diddle minute – for one entire moiety of the sum borrowed has to be paid to the gentleman who had the trouble of performing the insult, and who had then to stand still and be thrashed for performing it.

Rather a small, but still a scientific, diddle is this. The diddler approaches the bar of a tavern, and demands a couple of twists of tobacco. These are handed him, when, having slightly examined them, he says:

“I don’t much like this tobacco. Here, take it back, and give me a glass of brandy and water in its place.”

The brandy and water is furnished and imbibed, and the diddler makes his way to the door. But the voice of the tavern-keeper arrests him.

“I believe, sir, you have forgotten to pay for your brandy and water.”

“Pay for my brandy and water! – didn’t I give you the tobacco for the brandy and water? What more would you have?”

“But, sir, if you please, I don’t remember that you paid for the tobacco.”

“What do you mean, by that, you scoundrel? – Didn’t I give you back your tobacco? Isn’t that your tobacco lying there? Do you expect me to pay for what I did not take?”

“But, sir,” says the publican, now rather at a loss what to say, “but sir – ”

“But me no buts, sir,” interrupts the diddler, apparently in very high dudgeon, and slamming the door after him, as he makes his escape. – “But me no buts, sir, and none of your tricks upon travellers.”

Here again is a very clever diddle, of which the simplicity is not its least recommendation. A purse, or pocket-book, being really lost, the loser inserts in one of the daily papers of a large city a fully descriptive advertisement. Whereupon our diddler copies the facts of this advertisement, with a change of heading, of general phraseology and address. The original, for instance, is long, and verbose, is headed “A Pocket-Book Lost!” and requires the treasure, when found, to be left at No. 1 Dick street. The copy is brief, and being headed with “Lost” only, indicates No. 2 Tom, or No. 3 Harry Street; as the locality at which the owner may be seen. Moreover, it is inserted in at least five or six of the papers of the day, while, in point of time, it makes its appearance only a few hours after the original. Should it be read by the loser of the purse, he would hardly suspect it to have any reference to his own misfortune. But, of course, the chances are five or six to one, that the finder will repair to the address given by the diddler, rather than to that pointed out by the rightful proprietor. The former pays the reward, pockets the treasure, and decamps.

Quite an analogous diddle is this. A lady of ton has dropped, some where in the street, a diamond ring of very unusual value. For its recovery, she offers some forty or fifty dollars reward – giving, in her advertisement, a very minute description of the gem and of its settings, and declaring that, upon its restoration at No. so and so, in such and such Avenue; a servant appears; the lady of the house is asked for and is declared to be out, at which astounding information, the visitor expresses the most poignant regret. His business is of importance, and concerns the lady herself. In fact, he had the good fortune to find her diamond ring. But, perhaps it would be as well that he should call again. “By no means!” says the servant; and “By no means!” says the lady’s sister and the lady’s sister-in-law, who are summoned forthwith. The ring is clamorously identified, the reward is paid, and the finder nearly thrust out of doors. The lady returns, and expresses some little dissatisfaction with her sister and sister-in-law, because they happen to have paid forty or fifty dollars for a fac-simile of her diamond ring – a fac-simile made out of real pinchbeck and paste.

But as there is really no end to diddling, so there would be none to this essay, were I even to hint at half the variations, or inflections, of which this science is susceptible. I must bring this paper, perforce, to a conclusion, and this I cannot do better than by a summary notice of a very decent, but rather elaborate diddle, of which our own city was made the theatre, not very long ago, and which was subsequently repeated with success, in other still more verdant localities of the Union. A middle-aged gentleman arrives in town from parts unknown. He is remarkably precise, cautious, staid, and deliberate in his demeanor. His dress is scrupulously neat, but plain, unostentatious. He wears a white cravat, an ample waistcoat, made with an eye to comfort alone; thick-soled cosy-looking shoes, and pantaloons without straps. He has the whole air, in fact, of your well-to-do, sober-sided, exact, and respectable “man of business,” par excellence – one of the stern and outwardly hard, internally soft, sort of people that we see in the crack high comedies – fellows whose words are so many bonds, and who are noted for giving away guineas, in charity, with the one hand, while, in the way of mere bargain, they exact the uttermost fraction of a farthing with the other.

He makes much ado before he can get suited with a boarding-house. He dislikes children. He has been accustomed to quiet. His habits are methodical – and then he would prefer getting into a private and respectable small family, piously inclined. Terms, however, are no object – only he must insist upon settling his bill on the first of every month, (it is now the second,) and begs his landlady, when he finally obtains one to his mind, not, on any account, to forget his instructions upon this point – but to send in a bill, and receipt, precisely at ten o’clock, on the first day of every month, and under no circumstances to put it off to the second.

These arrangements made, our man of business rents an office in a reputable, rather than in a fashionable quarter of the town. There is nothing he more despises than pretense. “Where there is much show,” he says, “there is seldom any thing very solid behind,” – an observation which so profoundly impresses his landlady’s fancy, that she makes a pencil memorandum of it forthwith, in her great family Bible, on the broad margin of the Proverbs of Solomon.

The next step is to advertise, after some such fashion as this, in the principal business sixpennies of the city – the pennies are eschewed as not “respectable” – and as demanding payment for all advertisements in advance. Our man of business holds it as a point of his faith that work should never be paid for until done.

WANTED. – The advertisers, being about to commence extensive business operations in this city, will require the services of three or four intelligent and competent clerks, to whom a liberal salary will be paid. The very best recommendations, not so much for capacity, as for integrity, will be expected. Indeed, as the duties to be performed involve high responsibilities, and large amounts of money must necessarily pass through the hands of those engaged, it is deemed advisable to demand a deposit of fifty dollars from each clerk employed. No person need apply, therefore, who is not prepared to leave this sum in the possession of the advertisers, and who cannot furnish the most satisfactory testimonials of morality. Young gentlemen piously inclined will be preferred. Application should be made between the hours of 10 and 11 A.M., and 4 and 5 P.M., of Messrs:

BOGGS, HOGGS, LOGS, FROGS & CO:
No 110 Dog Street

By the thirty-first day of the month, this advertisement has brought to the office of Messrs. Boggs, Hoggs, Logs, Frogs & Co., some fifteen or twenty young gentlemen piously inclined. But our man of business is in no hurry to conclude a contract with any – no man of business is ever precipitate – and it is not until the most rigid catechism in respect to the piety of each young gentleman’s inclination, that his services are engaged and his fifty dollars receipted for, just by way of proper precaution, on the part of the respectable firm of Boggs, Hoggs, Logs, Frogs and Company. On the morning of the first day of the next month, the landlady does not present her bill, according to promise – a piece of neglect for which the comfortable head of the house ending in ogs would no doubt have chided her severely, could he have been prevailed upon to remain in town a day or two for that purpose.

As it is, the constables have had a sad time of it, running hither and thither, and all they can do is to declare the man of business most emphatically, a “hen knee high” – by which some persons imagine them to imply that, in fact, he is n, e, i – by which again the very classical phrase non est inventus, is supposed to be understood. In the meantime the young gentlemen, one and all, are somewhat less piously inclined than before, while the landlady purchases a shilling’s worth of the best Indian rubber, and very carefully obliterates the pencil memorandum that some fool has made in her great family Bible, on the broad margin of the Proverbs of Solomon.

*  *  *

First published in the Philadelphia Saturday Courier.

ACCORDING to Wired magazine, the Pentagon just spent $4,000,000 to learn how to read our minds. (Er, I mean read “the enemy’s” minds! And we do seem to have a lot of enemies these days.) Leaving aside the question of just why anyone who could truly read minds would have any need of something so crude as weapons, this is pretty scary stuff if there’s any truth to it.

‘Forget the battlefield radios, the combat PDAs or even infantry hand signals. When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, they’ll read each other’s minds.

‘At least, that’s the hope of researchers at the Pentagon’s mad-science division Darpa. The agency’s budget for the next fiscal year includes $4 million to start up a program called Silent Talk. The goal is to “allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.” That’s on top of the $4 million the Army handed out last year to the University of California to investigate the potential for computer-mediated telepathy.

‘Before being vocalized, speech exists as word-specific neural signals in the mind. Darpa wants to develop technology that would detect these signals of  “pre-speech,” analyze them, and then transmit the statement to an intended interlocutor. Darpa plans to use EEG to read the brain waves. It’s a technique they’re also testing in a project to devise mind-reading binoculars that alert soldiers to threats faster the conscious mind can process them.

‘The project has three major goals, according to Darpa. First, try to map a person’s EEG patterns to his or her individual words. Then, see if those patterns are generalizable – if everyone has similar patterns. Last, “construct a fieldable pre-prototype that would decode the signal and transmit over a limited range.”…

Last year, the National Research Council and the Defense Intelligence Agency released a report suggesting that neuroscience might also be useful to “make the enemy obey our commands.”…

Earlier I said that this is pretty scary stuff if there’s any truth to it. Upon deeper consideration, I’ve decided that it’s very unlikely there’s any truth to it at all. Forcing people to “obey our commands”? Come on. More likely, all this “psychic combat” “research” is nothing but a racket; a con game that illustrates for us a sycophantic relationship between not-too-bright military bureaucrats carving out a comfortable niche for themselves, and clever “contractors” who have figured out a way to cut themselves in on a slice of the biggest military budget ever seen on planet Earth. (Currently, the U.S. military budget is nearly the size of all the other military budgets in the world combined.)

Since no is really minding the store (it’s “unpatriotic” to notice when our war machine is misused for evil purposes, and “anti-Semitic” — even if you’re Jewish — to notice that Zionists and neocons use our men as cannon fodder) — a large part of this huge sum is bound to find its way into the pockets of crooks. Better them than warmongers, I suppose.