Systems For Human Action EXchange (SFHAX)
As a member of a professional community, one must acknowledge one's intellectual debt to those who preceded, and help the reader understand the background of the author. My interest in the social sciences began in high school. Albert Adler, my social studies teacher, encouraged debate and critical analysis even though he disagreed with many of my conclusions. It was a time of change with the Vietnam war in full swing. A fellow volunteer in the Nixon-Agnew campaign challenged me to read The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. This lead to the reading of the rest of her works and still not satisfied, the reading of Human Action, Theory and History and The Theory of Money and Credit by Ludwig von Mises. I continued to read other authors on a wide variety of subjects, but became most interested in economics.
This was an avocation. I had always wanted to be a professional engineer. I enjoy design and the challenge of solving a problem, preparing plans, seeing them executed and then creating something new. After receiving my Bachelor of Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, I started my engineering career in the Research and Development Department of Wallace and Tiernan a manufacturer of equipment for the process industry when it was a division of Pennwalt. At this time I started writing computer programs in Fortran, Cobol and RatFor. These first programs where used to automatically draw scales for use in pressure and flow gauges. I also developed a line of small pressure regulators that are still for sale.
I saw that manufacturing in the New York metropolitan area was in decline. I changed jobs and began working for Electro-Nucleonics, Inc. I worked on vacuum systems for the nuclear energy industry. Three Mile Island occurred and nuclear energy no longer looked like a promising career. I knew how to program computers in Fortran and also had an economics degree so I took a job writing asset-liability management programs for The Bank of New York's Treasury Department.
Even when I was working at Wallace and Tiernan I wanted to start my own business. I thought my skills in computers would allow me take advantage of the new, at the time, personal computers and apply them to small business. I formed SysServe, Inc. with a colleague and started a business working with a time share company to develop an Asset-Liability Management System for foreign books of banks and consulting with mid-sized companies on automating using personal computers. I issued a bi-weekly news letter called Asset-Liability Management Report. It was mildly successful but, after a major client unexpectedly passed away, cutting into its income stream, I decided I could make more money by working for someone else. I closed SysServe, Inc. and took a job with W.R. Grace, again using my programming skills to write financial analysis programs for their retail division.
When W.R. Grace decided to close the retail division I had to look for another job. Since they closed the division in an orderly manner, I had time to reflect on where I wanted to go with my career. I decided to go back into engineering. I thought the best way to show potential employers I still knew engineering, even though my most recent experience was in banking and finance, was to take the professional engineer examinations. I had the necessary years of experience from my first jobs. I took the examinations and obtained my Professional Engineer License.
I was able to find a position at NUI Elizabethtown Gas as a staff engineer. My initial work was designing industrial and commercial metering and regulation stations, managing a cast iron replacement study, meter replacement, and reviewing environmental studies of former manufactured gas sites. At about this time personal computers became powerful enough that calculations that were impractical now became practical. For example, it became possible to calculate the flows and pressures within a limited piping network. Before this time, due to the computational complexity, it was educated guesswork solving problems of low pressure in the gas network or determining the size of pipes in a network to serve new customers. The company moved me into the planning department and assigned me the task of bringing computerized network modeling into the company. I did rewriting and enhancing much of the core updating and viewing software.
The work we were doing with the conversion of paper utility pipeline records into electronic form, which is now called a geographic information system (GIS), was considered advanced and we had numerous visitors from utilities located not just in the United States but from other countries. They wanted to learn how we converted the utility divisions of NUI into GIS and how to use the GIS to generate electronic pipeline models for network analysis, maps and indexed map books. NUI, the parent of Elizabethtown Gas, spun our group off into a separate unregulated business. We built the business working with water utilities as well as gas utilities. Unfortunately NUI ran into financial difficulties caused by its expansion from gas utilities into trading and non-gas utility activities. Our unregulated group, while profitable, was too small in NUI's eyes to be worth selling so they decided to close it. My manager and I decided to form a company and acquire it. We were proceeding along this line, when Hatch Mott MacDonald, LLC, a large engineering consulting firm, made an offer for us to move the group into their firm. NUI agreed and the group is now part of Hatch Mott MacDonald.
I have also been active in the non-profit sector. In my early college days I was active in politics and become president of the Stevens Republican club. In my junior and senior years I moved away from being active in politics to writing a column for the Steven's student newspaper, The STUTE, called the Rights of Man as well as some feature articles. Later, when I was working for NUI Elizabethtown Gas, I became active in the county level Chamber of Commerce. I was appointed the Chairman of the Traffic and Transportation Committee.
I have been a lifelong model railroader and joined the Model Railroad Club, Inc., serving first in the elected offices of Secretary and then President. As President I was engineer of record and project manager for a 6,000 square foot expansion of the club building. This expansion was constructed, except the sprinkler system, with club forces. I served as President for ten years until I resigned, when the press of my business obligations become too much for me to devote sufficient time to the position.
I have continued my interest in economics, which began in high school, by earning a Master of Arts in economics from New York University. At NYU I prepared my master's thesis under the direction of professors Israel Kirzner and Bernard Wasow titled A Critical Survey of the Current Analytical Views on Unemployment. After graduating, my interest in economics continued. I attended the economics seminar series run by Mario Rizzo and Gerald O'Driscoll. When the seminar series was moved to daytime hours and restricted to graduate students, I formed the New York Austrian Economic Association. This group held monthly meetings where a graduate student from NYU would lead a discussion on economic theory. Sanford Ikeda, Professor Emeritus of Economics, was one of the leaders. A member of this group was Eugene Epstein. He was a writer on economics at Baron's. During this time I read Murray Rothbard's Man Economy and State and The Mystery of Banking.
I was also heavily influenced by my parents' demonstration of the Christian faith through their work in the church and their concrete demonstration of its practice. If one studies Ayn Rand's writings, one soon realizes that they do not adequately deal with the human condition. The family, especially the processes of life from birth to death, including sickness and disability, is ignored. What she has done, which is very important and perhaps pioneering, is showing people trying to understand and use reality to satisfy human needs. She does not treat humans as ineffectual or at the mercy of forces impossible to understand.
In 2014 I made a choice that lead to my founding of SFHAX The Workplace Community. In graduate school I wanted to pursue a thesis and Ph.D. Dissertation in Economic Development and Unemployment. I was told by my thesis advisor. that it was too ambitious given my level of experience. Fifty years later I realized I probably have enough experience in enterprise computer system development, project management and a variety of industries to work on a labor exchange that could enhance economic development and reduce substantially unemployment. I also realized that I was comfortable but not wealthy and could devote the remainder of my life to a project that was both useful and fun. Believe it or not I enjoy writing C++ code and building complex systems from fundamental scientific principles, especially when I don't have a boss breathing down my neck with unrealistic schedules.
It is my belief that each of us must examine as rationally as we can the teachings of others, trying to integrate and classify their work and trying to push forward, knowing that no one has all of the answers. My hope is that you, dear reader, will think about what I have written as an attempt to help advance the human condition. My basic philosophical premise is that there is one reality discoverable through the process of rational human thought. Your thoughtful comments are appreciated even if you disagree, but please do not respond in an ideological and unthinking fashion.