David Ferguson is a retired professor of economics. He taught economics and personal finance at Lorain County Community College in Elyria, Ohio for 31 years. He received a BA in economics from Hiram College (Hiram,Ohio) and an MBA with a concentration in marketing from Kent State University (Kent,Ohio). His non-academic experience includes testifying as an expert witness in civil law cases and holding licenses in real estate, insurance, and securitites (Registered Representative). He is on the Board of Research Advisers of the Dayton, Ohio based Buckeye Institute and is co-founder of the Intercollegiate Social Science Association (ISSA,Cleveland,Ohio). He is President of the Adam Ferguson Institute in North Ridgeville, Ohio which he founded in 1996. A paper "Some Advice from Ludwig, Murray, and Michael on Regional Growth and Development" was published in the ISSA Proceedings. He is presently working on the development of the Tucson Center for Socionomic Research, a division of the Adam Ferguson Institute, and is an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona.
Richard Reno Biondi, 27, is a graduate student at the University of Idaho pursuing an MA in political science with an emphasis in international relations. He received a BA in political science from the University of Washington in 1997 after matriculating from Shoreline Community College. Currently, Biondi's research interests focus on transatlantic issues ranging from NATO enlargement to the Atlantic Union Movement. He has spent a considerable amount of time researching various world order strategies. Prior to attending college, Biondi served with the 2nd Ranger Battalion and as motorized infantryman at Ft. Lewis, WA while in the US Army from 1989 to 1992. He is married and has three little girls ranging in age from 2 to 6.
Clint Bolick serves as vice president and director of litigation at the Institute for Justice, which he co-founded in 1991 to engage in constitutional litigation protecting individual liberty and challenging the regulatory welfare state. The Institute also teaches public interest litigation skills to lawyers, law students, and policy activitsts.
Bolick is engaged in cutting-edge cases around the nation, including defending school choice programs, challenging barriers to entrepreneurship, and helping defend the California Civil Rights Initiative. American Lawyer selected him as one of the nation's top "45 young lawyers outside the private sector whose vision and commitment are changing lives." Bolick has authored several books and articles, including the recently published THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION FRAUD: Can We Restore the American Civil Rights Vision? (Cato Institute, 1996); and GRASSROOTS TYRANNY: The Limits of Federalism (Cato Intitute, 1993).
Bolick received his law degree from the University of California at Davis in 1982, and his undergraduate degree from Drew University in 1979. The Institute for Justice was co-founded by its president and general counsel, William H. (Chip) Mellor III and Bolick.
Donald J. Boudreaux has been president of the Foundation for Economic Education since May 1997. From 1992 through 1997, he was Associate Professor of Law and Economics at Clemson University, and from 1985 to 1989 he was Assistant Professor of Economics at George Mason University. His PhD in economics is from Auburn University (1986) and his J.D. is from the University of Virginia (1992). He is published in the Wall Street Journal, Reason, Regulation, Supreme Court Economic Review, The Freeman, Cato Journal, and other popular and academic outlets.
Born, April 6, 1956, Mr. Caton has worked extensively in "designer foods" and alternative nutrition products since 1981. He is a graduate of L.A. Valley College ('75), a Vietnam-era veteran ('75-'78), and the founder of a multi-million dollar company now traded on the NASDAQ (Nutrition For Life, 1984). He is the founder of Lumen Foods (1986), and its popular internet site (soybean.com, 1995), which currently manufacturers the best-selling vegetarian "meat" snack on the North American continent, Stonewall's Jerquee.
He is the author of The Lumen Book (1986), an interdisciplinary work on vegetarianism and the role of meat analogs, with over 40,000 copies in print. Caton has been a speaker on the emerging importance of soy protein for over 10 years. A keynote speaker at the International Soyfoods Conference in Mexico City in 1997, Mr. Caton has been a proponent of the ecological need to substitute animal proteins for vegetable proteins for nearly 20 years. His designer foods are a reflection of that position.
Since August, 1998, Mr. Caton has been intensively involved in the Y2K preparation business. Besides designing cost effective, long-term storable foods, Caton has formed an extensive network with Y2K remediators and has made soybean.com a veritable contact point for news stories on the latest developments "in the pits." A frequent contributor to y2knewswire.com, Caton is also a lecturer and radio guest on y2k-related issues.
Born in 1945, Michael Darby is a former Australian Army Officer whose academic qualification is First Class Interpreter (Chinese National) , British Civil Service examination, 1970. Darby has been writing and broadcasting on politics and economics since 1972.
In April 1975 he participated in the evacuation of 330 orphans from Saigon via Clark Field to Los Angeles. With his late wife Lynne, Michael established the Australian volunteer medical and civil aid team which, led by Dr. John Whitehall, was the only non-American contribution to Operation New Life, caring for refugees in transit through Guam. Later in 1975 Darby was honorary logistics officer for a similar team, recruited by Lynne and led by Dr. Whitehall and the late Bill Bancroft, which functioned in East Timor from the August outbreak of the civil war until the Indonesian invasion in December.
In 1976 Darby introduced computerised campaigning into Australian free enterprise politics, in 1979 became founding publisher of Free Market Magazine and in 1984 wrote the political campaigning textbook and database program "Majority".
Eldest son of long-serving parliamentarian the late Dr. Douglas Darby MLA and Esme Jean Darby MBE, founders of the Captive Nations Council of New South Wales, Michael on his fathers death in 1986 inherited the mantle of principal Australian campaigner for the liberation of the nations unwillingly incorporated in the Soviet and Jugoslav Communist Empires. He has built and operates an authoritative web site for Queenslanders for Constitutional Monarchy, and is currently preparing an Internet-based Museum of Communist Tyranny.
An accomplished public speaker and scriptwriter, Michael Darby is a comic entertainer and performance poet at the leading edge of the revival of the Australian bush poetry tradition. He is a free-trader and campaigner for the rights of miners and pastoralists, and his greatest claims to fame are Darbys Law of Taxation Futility: "All taxation, by whatever means it is levied, automatically generates a demand for governmental expenditure greater than the amount of revenue received", and Darbys Law of Bureaucracy: "In any hierarchy, all goals become subordinated to the aim of preserving the hierarchy."
Robert R. Detlefsen is a senior research fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and director of CEI's Insurance Reform Project. His writings on insurance regulation analyze the trend toward using law and regulation to impose social policy mandates on private insurers. He also writes on government policy pertaining to legalized gambling. Detlefsen is the author of CIVIL RIGHTS UNDER REAGAN (San Francisco ICS Press, 1991). His articles and reviews have been published in scholarly books and journals, as well as in The New Republic, Reason, the Washington Post, and the Washington Times.
Prior to joining CEI, Detlefsen taught courses in government and public policy at Hollins College, California State University-San Bernardino, and the University of California-Berkeley. He has been a research fellow at the University of California-Irvine's Public Policy Research Organization, and a postdoctoral fellow in the Program on Constitutional Government at Harvard University. Detlefsen hold s Ph.D. in political science from the University of California-Berkeley.
Greetings Club Members,
Allow me to introduce myself: I'm Laurie Fitzgerald, senior consultant for The Consultancy, Inc.---a Colorado (US)-based firm focusing over the past two decades on advancing the discipline of organizational design and whole system transformation. In other words, we accompany organizations ranging from the Fortune 500 (Motorola, Kodak, DEC, J&J, etc) to the smallest of enterprises, on their journeys through profound change. The theoretical basis underpinning my practice is the "new" science, specifically the powerful worldview arising from Chaos.
In addition to my work which often takes me to the far corners of the globe, I serve as leader of the Chaos Think Tank for the International Association of Facilitators, the web- and listmaster at the Chaos ThinkSite, and coordinator (oxymoron?) of the Denver-based Chaos Club...a 3 year old face-to-face association of people representing numerous walks of life that meets regularly to engage in dialogue about the transformation of large systems through the lens of the new science. I am looking forward to our own conversations in the Cactus Club.
Fred E. Foldvary received his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He has taught economics at the Latvian University of Agriculture, Virginia Tech, John F. Kennedy University (Walnut Creek, California), the University of San Francisco, California State University at Hayward, and the University of California at Berkeley Extension.
Fred is the author of The Soul of Liberty and Public Goods and Private Communities, and edited Beyond Neoclassical Economics. His Dictionary of Free Market Economics is forthcoming in Oct. 1998. Foldvary's areas of research include public finance, governance, the economics of transition, ethical philosophy, and land economics.
Kenneth Gregg is the author of The Three Enlightenments (Santa Ana: Rampart Institute, 1980). Currently editor of the Newsletter for Adoption Services for Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada. His specialties are: libertarian history, freethought history, property theory (primarily land and intellectual property), and mediation. He is the author of numerous articles on libertarian and freethought history and theory. He has given courses on American Classical Liberalism--1776-1950 (and related subjects) at UNLV and elsewhere, and has done extensive work on the proprietary community theorist, Spencer Heath, with Spencer MacCallum. He is currently completing a three lecture series on The March of Socialism. The first lecture was on the growth of the mini-municipality movement (often presumed to be a free-market phenomenon) of the "homeowner associations". The second lecture is A Study in Goose-Killing: the national sales/internet tax which will be delivered on the first sunday in December for the Libertarian Society of North Las Vegas. The final lecture in the series is on Nationalization of Family Life: URESA and UIFSA child support laws, visitation and adoption federal legislation, which will also cover the horrible American Gulag--the foster care system.
Kenneth Gregg is working on a review of Andrew Galambos' masterpiece on freedom, Sic Itur Ad Astra, for the Voluntaryist magazine. He is by profession a mediator and paralegal (primarily in domestic law) and is the founder and moderator of CLASSical Liberals of Las Vagas.
Gregory M.A. Gronbacher, Ph.D. is currently Director of the Center for Economic Personalism, a subsidiary research facility at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Gregory has his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Pontifical Institute in Dublin, Ireland, his M. Phil. in philosophy and political theory from the International Academy for Philosophy in Liechtenstein, and his B.A. in Politics, Philosophy, and Theology, from Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.
His areas of speciality include Catholic social teaching, political and social philosophy, ethics, natural law, applied ethics, the thought of John Paul II, and Classical Liberalism.
Economic Personalism is an attempt to generate a paradigm for analysing moral concerns of market activity. It relies on a synthesis of free market economic theory and principles of Christian social thought, especially European Personalism.
Gregory has taught Theology and Philosophy in Dublin, Ireland, and at Mt. Aloysius College, in Cresson, PA. The Center for Economic Personalism is presently engaged in a three year research plan to culminate in a three volume set on the foundations of economic personalism. The Center will also launch a refereed journal, Markets & Morality, in March, 1998.
Richard O. Hammer is President and founder of the Free Nation Foundation, a libertarian think tank which works toward attaining a free nation by building a clear vision of the critical institutions which constitute that nation. He is the author of dozens of articles on libertarian polity and theory. Rich has worked in the past as an engineer, computer scientist, and house builder. His education includes a BSEE from SUNY at Buffalo (1973) and an MS in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University (1976).
David R. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, and an associate professor of economics at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
Henderson's research and writing focus on public policy. Two themes emerge from his research: first, that government regulation and spending often have unintended consequences that are worse than the problems they are supposed to solve, and second, that freedom and free markets work to solve people's problems.
David Henderson is the editor of The Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics (Warner Books, 1993), a book that communicates to a general audience what and how economists think. The Wall Street Journal commented, "The editor, David R. Henderson of the Hoover Institution, must be a ruthless man. His brainchild is a tribute to the power of the short, declarative sentence." The encyclopedia went through three printings and was translated into Spanish. Henderson also writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal and Fortune, and is a regular columnist with The Red Herring.
Henderson has been on the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School since 1984, and a research fellow with Hoover since 1990. He was the John M. Olin Visiting Professor with the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis in June 1994; a senior economist with the President's Council of Economic Advisers from 1982 to 1984; a visiting professor at the University of Santa Clara from 1980 to 1981; a senior policy analyst with the Cato Institute from 1979 to 1980; and an assistant professor of economics at the University of Rochester's Graduate School of Management from 1975 to 1979.
In 1997, he received the Rear Admiral John Jay Schieffelin award for excellence in teaching from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Dr. Henderson has written articles for such popular publications as: Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Barron's, Fortune, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Public Interest, National Review, and Reason. His first article for Fortune, titled "The Myth of MITI," earned the 1984 Mencken Award for Best Investigative Report. He is a regular columnist for The Red Herring, writes frequently for Fortune, and is a contributing editor to Reason and Executive Alert. He has also written numerous scholarly articles for such journals as: Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, Journal of Monetary Economics, Cato Journal, Regulation, Contemporary Policy Issues, and Energy Journal.
Henderson has spoken on public policy issues before a wide variety of audiences, including the American Farm Bureau Federation, Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, the St. Louis Discussion Club, the Commonwealth Club of California (National Defense and Business Economics Section), the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Fidelity Investments Second Annual Client Conference, and the professional economics staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He has also spoken to economist and general audiences at many universities around the country, including Carnegie-Mellon University, Brown University, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Davis, the University of Rochester, the University of Chicago, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School, and the Hoover Institution. He has given papers at annual conferences held by the American Economics Association, the Western Economics Association, and the Association of Public Policy and Management. He has testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources. He has also appeared on C-SPAN, CNN, and various regional talk shows.
Born and raised in Canada, Dr. Henderson earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the University of Winnipeg in 1970 and his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1976. He resides in Pacific Grove, California with his wife Rena and daughter Karen. He coaches girls' basketball for the Pacific Grove Recreation League.
Career emphasis in television production. Worked as Production Manager for ABC Television Network on the following television productions: General Hospital (soap opera), Benson, Making A Living (sitcoms), Battle of the Network Stars, American Music Awards 1981-1983, Emmy Awards - 1981, Academy Awards 1990 - 1993. Currently completing post-production on The Hollywood Celebrity Shoot.
Elected in 1992 and currently serving on the Board of Directors of the National Rifle Association. Serving as Chairman of the Range Development Committee and has served as Vice Chair of Education & Training and Grassroots Committees. An NRA Certified Firearms Instructor, also NRA Training Counselor (trains NRA instructors) and Chief Range Safety Officer. Working with "gun guru" Jeff Cooper, has re-written the NRA's Personal Protection Course, to be released in May 1998.
Awarded a fifth degree black belt in Kung Fu, currently instructs martial arts program at Cal State University Fullerton. Currently writing screenplays for feature film productions.
Gail B. Kettlewell is Provost, Manassas Campus, Northern Virginia Community Colege, Manassas, VA. She is also an Adjunct Professor, National Center for Community College Education, George Mason University where she is on the Program Advisory Committee, and Chair of the Dissertation Committee. Other activites have included the State Executive and Advisory Committees for Tech-Prep; Community Partnership for GrandVIEW, Chair; National Conference at George Mason University on "A Dialogue on Chaos Theory in the Classroom", Chair; U.S. Department of Labor Workforce Development Forums, 1991-1994, member; consultant for National University, La Jolla, CA, on Ed.D in Leadership and Management, 1996. She has raised over $500,000 from private donors to college foundations for campus development since 1993 for Amphitheatre, scholarships, and other programs. Dr. Kettlewell serves on several Boards including Prince William/Greater Manassas Chamber of Commerce, Prince William/166 Economic Development Partnership and the Manassas Center for the Arts. Her name can be found in Who's Who in American Education, 1992-1997 and Who's Who in America, 1997, 1998. She received the Distinguished Woman Award, Prince Willliam County, 1997, 1998 and received membership in the Oxford Universtiy International Round Table on Community Colleges, 1998. She is an author of numerous publications, an organizer of many workshops, and has frequently delivered speeches to local and national groups.
I am a tiller of the soil in the rolling hills of Chautauqua Co. NY. I am an activist for property rights, jury rights, family rights, the Bill of Rights, and everything else that's right. I believe in civil disobedience when it is necessary to accentuate morality and truth. I am also a free lance writer and coordinator of the New York Fully Informed Jury Association.
Don Lavoie is the David H. and Charles G. Koch Chair of Economics at the Program on Social and Organizational Learning, George Mason University. He received a BS in Computer Science from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1973 and a Ph.D. in Economics in 1981 from New York University. He is best known as author of two books published in 1985, Rivalry and Central Planning and National Economic Planning: What is Left?, which elaborate on the "Austrian" schools critique of centralized economic planning, and for his work in the philosophy of economics. His books on the critique of central planning could be said to have anticipated and explained the collapse in 1989 of the soviet-type economies in Eastern Europe, and his work in philosophy has won him international recognition as a leading critic of mainstream economics. He edited Economics and Hermeneutics (London: Routledge, 1991), a collection of essays which explores the implications of hermeneutical philosophy for economics, and a collection of essays by his teacher, Ludwig Lachmann, entitled Expectations and the Meaning of Institutions (London: Routledge,1994). He has also examined the implications of recent developments in object-oriented software engineering, and co-authored [with Howard Baetjer, William Tulloh, and Richard Langlois] a study of the software industry called Component Software: A Market Perspective on the Coming Revolution in Software Development (Patricia Seybold Group, 1993). Recently he completed a book manuscript on Culture and the Spirit of Enterprise coauthored with Emily Chamlee, which explores the relationship between economics and the field of cultural studies, and an essay on "The 'Objectivity' of Scholarship and the Ideal of the University," which defends institutions of higher learning against some of their recent critics.
Professor Lavoie was twice the recipient of George Mason University's Distinguished Faculty award and has been one of the university's leading innovators in teaching methods, developing new ways to use software to enhance the learning experience of his students. He has experimented extensively with the use of Lotus Notes to facilitate faculty collaboration and has developed ways of using Folio VIEWS hypertext software to enable electronic class discussions, which led to his being selected as a finalist for the Folio Corporation's 1995 MVP award. He served as Director of the MA in Telecommunications program for two years, was co-founder with Jack High of the department known as Program on Social and Organizational Learning, and has been an active faculty member of the Economics, Public Policy, and Cultural Studies Ph.D. programs.
Alvin Lowi, Jr. is a professional mechanical engineer in private (free-lance) practice for over 35 years. He was influenced to take this entrepreneurial career path while still in graduate school by his friend, aerospace-industry colleague and physics tutor Andrew J. Galambos. He prepared for a role with Galambos in founding the Free Enterprise Institute (FEI) in 1961, subsequently teaching Galambos' basic course offering entitled Capitalism, the Key to Survival, by extensive readings and studies of the works of the philosophers of natural science, individualism, free-market economics and the American Revolution. Such authors as Baruch Spinoza, Francis Bacon, Arthur Eddington, Percy Bridgman, Ayn Rand, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Thoreau, Ludwig Mises, Friedrich Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, Frederic Bastiat, J.S. Mill, Albert J. Nock, Herbert Spencer, Lysander Spooner, F. A. Harper, Robert LeFevre and Leonard Read were consulted if not mastered. Through his association with Galambos and FEI, personally enriching acquaintances were made with Ayn Rand and her Objectivist cotiere, Leonard Read and the staff of the Foundation for Economic Education, Baldy Harper and the Institute for Humane Studies, Robert Lefevre and the Freedom School, Prof. von Mises, Spencer Heath and his anthropologist grandson Spencer MacCallum. The latter association opened new avenues of inquiry into the social world that eventually transcended for him the ideologically-oriented program of FEI and shaped his present concentration on the possibilities of a natural science of society.
Gadsden, AL Public Schools
Georgia Institute of Technology:
BME (1951); Naval Science, MSME
(1955); Concentration: Thermodynamics and Heat Transfer;
Thesis:Two-Phase Hydrodynamics; Graduate Seminar in Philosophy of
Science and Scientific Method.
University of California, Los Angeles:
Ph.D. (Completed residency, research and exams in 1962. Left to join Free
Enterprise Institute staff prior to satisfying language requirement.);
Concentration: Physics and Thermodynamics; Dissertation: Design Theory for
Miniature Centrifugal Pumps.
Member of Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE); American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME); National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE).
Pi Tau Sigma Mechanical Engineering Honor Society; Scabbard and Blade Naval Science Honor Society; Biographee in Marquis' Who's Who in the West and in Science and Engineering ; Registered to practice Professional Engineering in California, 1958.
Commissioned Regular Navy Line Officer in 1951. Served in U.S. Pacific Fleet Amphibious Forces at sea during Korean Conflict.
Aero- and Astronautical vehicle accessories research, design and development; Automotive engineering, emission controls, alternative fuel utilization and forensics; On-site utility (water, power, heat and refrigeration) and energy management systems design and development; Aviation engine design and development
Free Enterprise Institute (FEI):
Offering courses to the public in economics, exchange, insurance,
entrepreneurship, natural science, history, non-political government and
intellectual property oriented toward the understanding and operation of
autonomous society according to the theories of Andrew J. Galambos
Liberal Educators, Ltd.:
Contract offerings of FEI courses and seminars by prominent libertarians in
various Southern California locations
Alvin Lowi and Associates:
Consulting engineering on fee-for-service and risk venture basis.
Terraqua, Ltd:
Water distillation equipment manufacturing and marketing
Daeco Fuels and Engineering, Inc:
Motorsports fuels, emission and engine testing
Lion Engineering, Inc:
Aviation engine and fuel injection development
Graduate assistant teaching undergraduate thermal engineering courses at Georgia Tech. Visiting faculty and thesis advisor of the graduate school of energy management at the University of Pennsylvania. Fellow of the Institute for Humane Studies, Menlo Park, CA. Lecturer and research associate of the Free Enterprise Institute, Los Angeles.
Holder of over 30 U.S. and foreign patents on various apparati and processes. Licensor of several of these patents to other companies. Author of several technical papers on assorted engineering topics published in various scientific and engineering journals.
History and philosophy of science; Epistemology and methods of scientific endeavor; Scientific method applied to social phenomena; The workings and future prospects of autonomous society; Spontaneous order in social affairs; The study of politics as a social pathology; Writing various findings on these subjects in the form of essays, letters and e-mail colloquy for controlled circulation.
Tibor R. Machan is Professor of Philosophy at Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, USA (on leave, at Chapman University and the Hoover Institution, CA) He was smuggled out from Hungary in 1953, when he was 14 years old. After emigrating to the United States in 1956, he served in the U.S. Air Force, and then earned BA (Claremont McKenna College), MA (New York University), and Ph.D. (University of California at Santa Barbara) degrees in philosophy.
Machan wrote The Pseudo-Science of B. F. Skinner (1974), Human Rights and Human Liberties (1975), and The Freedom Philosophy (1987, in Sweden), Marxism: A Bourgeois Critique (1988) Individuals and Their Rights (1989) Liberty and Culture: Essays on the Idea of a Free Society (1989), Capitalism and Individualism: Reframing the Argument for the Free Society (1990) and The Virtue of Liberty (1994). He edited The Libertarian Alternative (1974), The Libertarian Reader (1982), The Main Debate: Communism versus Capitalism (1987) and Commerce and Morality (1988). He co-edited Rights and Regulation (1983), Recent Work in Philosophy (1983) and Liberty for the 21st Century (1995). He has contributed to numerous scholarly journals, including The American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy of Science, Theory and Decision, Philosophia, The Review of Metaphysics, American Journal of Jurisprudence, Business and Professional Ethics Journal, Philosophy, The Journal of Applied Philosophy, The International Journal of Applied Ethics, Metaphilosophy, Res Publica, The International Journal of Social Economics, and Public Affairs Quarterly. He has written columns for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Asia Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Journal of Commerce, The Houston Chronicle and, as a regular columnist for three decades, The Orange County Register. His essays have appeared in National Review, The Humanist, World & I, This World, Free Inquiry, Chronicles of Culture, The American Spectator, Policy Review, Economic Affairs, The Freeman, The American Scholar, Jobs and Capital and Reason Magazine.
Machan is co-founder of Reason Magazine, which he edited for two years, and editor of Reason Papers, a scholarly annual. He is on the advisory boards for several foundations and think tanks and has also served on the founding Board of the Jacob J. Javits Graduate Fellowship Program of the U. S. Department of Education.
Machan has been a guest on "Firing Line" and numerous other interview programs. He co-hosted, with the late Sidney Hook, a television program, "For the Love of Work," on the ideas of Karl Marx.
Machan has lectured in political philosophy throughout Latin America and Europe (Eastern and Western) during the last 6 summers. He has spoken on issues related to the free society on campuses throughout the United States. His most recent book, A Primer on Ethics, was published by the University of Oklahoma Press. Machan was visiting professor of philosophy at the United States Military Academy in 1992-93. His next book, Generosity; Virtue in Civil Society, will be published by Cato Institute in 1998 and Classical Individualism by Routledge in 1999. He is at present co-authoring Business Bashing, Why its Hazardous to Our Health and co-editing Political Philosophy, Essential Selections, for Prentice-Hall.
John D. McGinnis is an assistant professor of finance at the Penn State Altoona College. He has an M.S in Business Administration from Indiana University South Bend and a Ph.D. in Finance from the Pennsylvania State University, as well as a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.
Dr. McGinnis is the founder of the Dead Economists Society, an economics discussion club of business men and women in the Philadelphia area. He has created and maintains the Dead Economists Society home page on the World Wide Web which presents the ideas of classical economists. His ongoing research involves issues related to compensation, corporate and personal finance, and the economics of age.
I grew up in the United States Midwest, in the Fort Wayne Indiana area, and was formally trained in school psychology, working in that profession for some three years. Never achieving a comfort level with the extent to which IQ tests are relied upon within this specialty, I left the field to pursue a 15 year venture in an innovative form of transit/outdoor advertising.
After getting my first personal computer in 1990, I acquired a fundamental fascination for the hardware, the software and the possibilities. This has led to activities such as PC consulting, web authoring and desk top publishing, but I might best be regarded simply as an enthusiastic user. In my view, the personal computer, particularly in light of the communications capabilities which it affords, is of overwhelming importance as an empowerment tool for the masses. Whether accomplished quixotically or quietly, my overriding objective is to contribute to the realization of this enormous potential.
Mary J. Ruwart, Ph.D. is a former pharmaceutical research scientist and Assistant Professor of Surgery. She has worked extensively with the disadvantaged in low-income housing and was a contender for the 1992 Libertarian Vice-Presidential nomination.
Dr. Ruwart is the author of HEALING OUR WORLD: The Other Piece Of The Puzzle, hailed by Visions Magazine as "what may be the most important book of the decade." HEALING applies win-win strategies to the political realm.
Dr. Ruwart describes her sister Martie's contribution to HEALING and her assisted suicide with the help of Dr. Kevorkian in "To Die With Dignity" (McCall's Magazine, February, 1994).
Paul, 36, is a software developer for the Wonderware software company. He and his wife Kathy have three children, Jonathan, 11, Carl, 11, and Corinne, 5. Paul is active in Toastmasters (he's a CTM). He is also very active in his church, both locally and nationally. He's an Ordained Elder in the Presbyterian Church, now serving on a church commission examining "Ethical Issues and Human Needs." He plans to bring a pro-liberty, pro-market approach perspective to the commission. Paul is the internet coordinator for The Advocates for Self Government, a non-profit educational organization.
Parth J. Shah is Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Michigan-Dearborn and President of the Centre for Civil Society in New Delhi, India. He has earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Auburn University, Auburn (1960) and a B.S. in Pharmacy from M.S. University, Baroda, India (1982). His dissertation was entitled "Hong Kong's Free-Issue Monetary Regime (1972-1983): The Indeterminacy Puzzle". Fields of specialization include money-macroeconomics, laissez-faire banking, and international finance. Fields of interest include political economy of developing societies, methodology of social sciences, economics of privatization/desocialization, and public choice. He has been the recipient of several fellowships and scholarships including the Earhart Foundation Fellowship (1989-1990) and the Ludwig von Mises Institute Fellowship (1987-1989). He is the author of numerous publications and newspaper articles including "Hong-Kong's Interest-Rate Cartel" in the Journal of Economic Research (1997) and "The Persistence of Poverty in India: Culture or System?" in The Freeman (March, 1998) and "Market Forces in Hong Kong" (Economic Times, New Delhi, November 4, 1997).
Eric Szuter graduated in the top third of his class in engineering at Case Western Reserve University in December 1968. He volunteered for officer candidate school and pilot training in the Navy at the height of the Vietnam War, served as an officer, and was honorably discharged. Upon his discharge, he embarked on a career in engineering and construction and eventually became a registered mechanical engineer in the state of Louisiana. He gradually became interested in the study of the science of human behavior and the emerging science of society. He studied the scientific method, physics, the history of science and technology, and volitional science under Andrew J. Galambos via the Free Enterprise Institute 1978-1982. During that time, he became an official FEI subcontractor in the New Orleans market. Inspired by Galambos and wanting to go further with it, in 1992 he enrolled in long-distance masters program with Greenwich University of Norwalk Island, Australia, for the study of human ethology. Good fortune put him under the tutelage of world-class ethologist David Stenhouse, Ph.D. of Massey University, New Zealand, Alvin Lowi formerly of LIONS Tech in Southern California, and anthropologist Spencer Heath MacCallum of Nevada. In this way over the years Eric Szuter became an independent researcher, author, editor, and publisher. He founded SunriseUSA March 31, 1999. Szuter is the author of The Bridge to Liberty Design Parameters and The Return of Common Sense.
Titus Stauffer is an electrical engineer testing equipment design for Compaq Computers. He was raised as an Old Order Mennonite, driving horses and buggies, same as the Amish. He ran away from home at age 15 to continue his education in the modern world, graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1982. He is the author of 3 books including his latest effort, JURASSIC HORDE WHISPERER. Also BATS IN THE BELFRY BY DESIGN, and FREEDOM FROM FREEDOM FROMS. Titus lives in Houston, Texas, with his wife Mary.
Jim Vinoski is an engineer, writer and scholar living near Atlanta. Holder of a B.S. in mechanical engineering, he currently works as a Packaging Systems Engineer for General Mills, Inc.
An independent scholar studying economics and political philosophy as they relate to industrial development, Vinoski has been published in Plant Engineering Magazine, Today's Engineer and Liberty. He is a member of the Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society and the Libertarian Party.
My primary interests include literature, intellectual history and philosophy, particularly political philosophy. Currently, I am reading large amounts of Nietzsche and Leo Strauss, plus secondary sources on both authors. I am also very interested in questions of evolution, human nature and the origins of civil society. I recently finished Howard Baetjer's online graduate course on Bionomics which drew heavily on the works of Rothchild, Hayek, Schumpeter, Menger, Mises and others. In the spring I studied the connection between Austrian economics, hermeneutics and postmodernism in Don Lavoie's Interpretive Social Theory graduate course. Our primary readings included Han Georg Gadamer besides the usual cadre of Austrian economists. I graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill in 1996 with a BA in English and Political Science.
Since 1996 I have worked at the Center for Market Processes as Program Assistant and then as Director of the Koch Summer Fellow Program. Since June 1997 I have also worked with former New Zealand Cabinet Minister Maurice McTigue on importing lessons from New Zealand's political and economic reforms. I also serve on the Institute for Humane Studies' marketing and curriculum teams. My first serious introduction to free market ideas and libertarian political philosophy came during my summer as a Koch Summer Fellow at Reason Magazine when I happened to be reading Hayek, James Gleick's "Chaos" and Dougles Hoftstadter's book on set theory simultaneously.
Dr. Wolfram is George Munson Professor of Political Economy at
Hillsdale College and President of Hillsdale Policy Group, a consulting
firm specializing in taxation and policy analysis. He is a member of
Michigan's State Board of Education, and has served as Chairman of the
Headlee Amendment Blue Ribbon Commission and as a member of the Michigan
Enterprise Zone Authority, the Michigan Strategic Fund Board, and the
Michigan State Housing Development Authority Board. Dr. Wolfram's
public policy experience includes serving as Congressman Nick Smith's
Washington Office Chief of Staff, Michigan's Deputy State Treasurer for
Taxation and Economic Policy under Governor John Engler, and Senior
Economist to the Republican Senate in Michigan. Professor Wolfram
graduated summa cum laude from the University of California at Santa
Barbara. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of
California at Berkeley and has taught at several colleges and
universities, including Mount Holyoke College, The University of
Michigan, and Washington State University. His publications include
Towards a Free Society: An Introduction to Markets and the Political
System, and several works on Michigan's tax structure and other public
policy issues.