  A peculiar aspect of the MSSM, the simplest supersymmetric extension of the
Standard Model, is that it is usually defined including an ad hoc symmetry,
R-parity, whose sole purpose is to forbid rapid proton decay. This symmetry
deeply alters the phenomenology of the MSSM, and renders the experimental
search strategies quite involved. Besides, the MSSM suffers from a number of
flavor puzzles. Generically, the superparticle contributions to Flavor Changing
Neutral Currents (FCNC) are too large compared to experiment, both in the quark
and lepton sectors. The Minimal Flavor Violation (MFV) hypothesis aims at
suppressing these contributions, and when enforced as a symmetry principle,
achieves this in a very natural and systematic way. In this talk, it will be
shown that imposing MFV is not only able to suppress supersymmetric
contributions to FCNC, it also naturally explains the apparent stability of the
proton. As a result, R-parity can be avoided altogether, motivating the search
for supersymmetry through simpler channels, like for example single stop
resonant production, whose strength is predicted by MFV.
