RAH Community October 2026 Virtual Meeting
Ron Howard's Vision for a Voluntary Society
Featuring: Gerry Sauer
đź“… Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2026
⏰ Time: 5:00pm – 6:00pm PT
đź’» Virtual Location: Zoom Online
👉 Event Note: The 60-minute program will be followed by an optional 30-minute RAH Community Chapter meeting. Attendees are welcome to stay and participate in the chapter meeting.
đź“ť Notes:
- Members: Please make sure you are logged in to your SDP account to RSVP.
- Non-Members: You'll need to create an account on the SDP website to register (this does not require becoming a member). If you already have an account, simply log in.
After creating or logging in, go to Events > Chapter & IG Meetings and look for this event to complete your registration.
Abstract:
Ron’s maxim: “Peaceful, honest people have the right to be left alone.”
Join us for a look at a side of Ron Howard that people haven't always seen. After his pioneering work in decision analysis, Ron began to question the sense of our Federal public policy decision-making process. In the 1970s, he developed an alternate method for addressing societal concerns through an ethical system of rights on personal freedom, property and agreements, and peaceful, honest voluntary action.
Ron and his students went on to investigate how a wide variety of public policy issues might be better addressed in an ethical-rights voluntary society. In this session we’ll consider and discuss:
- Ron’s becoming distraught over public policy during the 1970s.
- His stepping back to read and think carefully about the role of government and rights in society. We’ll consider some useful perspectives for doing so.
- Ron proposing to his colleagues that we’d be much better off if we moved toward a simpler, more ethical, more fundamental system of rights, based on personal freedom, property, and agreements.
- A brief overview of the rights based on Ron’s maxim: We are free to go about our lives, including cooperating with others, making agreements, and acquiring and using property, so long as we are peaceful and honest in doing so, and we respect the right of others to do so as well.
- Some ways we might have greatly benefited over the years from moving toward Ron’s rights and transitioning toward more limited government
- Ron’s engaging his colleagues in testing the proposed rights in addressing a wide range of public policy concerns in a voluntary society. Some examples:
- The environment, roads, courts and enforcement, safety, professional licensing, health and financial security, inequity, economic recessions and inflation, bank regulation, defense and foreign policy, transitioning toward a more voluntary society
- We’ll put ourselves into Ron’s and his colleagues’ shoes and consider a few of the concerns in detail, including ones involving market failure and security.
- Other considerations, as time allows: Family life in a more voluntary society. Ron’s vision as helpful for understanding and discussing the political conflict today.
Dale Nesbitt has drafted a comprehensive book on the Design of a Free Society that he started with Ron. We expect to include Dale’s chapter list as part of the presentation.
About the Speaker:
Gerry Sauer holds a PhD in decision analysis and assisted Ron in creating the Voluntary Social Systems graduate course at Stanford. He has served as a Congressional Fellow on the legislative staff of the US Senate Commerce Committee's Oceans and Atmosphere Subcommittee, taught business analytics and a consulting, decision-analysis practice course as a professor at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business, and was an SDG partner and former co-head of the firm's financial services practice. He holds degrees in physics, electrical engineering, and philosophy, politics, and economics.