Wrongly convicted. Five years stolen. The truth refused to stay silent. In this second volume of Bearing the Cross, Dr. John M. Cobin carries readers back inside Valparaíso, where each day meant extortion, hunger, and the threat of violence. Imprisoned over an act of self-defense, with forensics affirming his innocence, he chronicles persecution endured and faith that would not break. A Baptist pastor, scholar, and father of seven, Cobin writes with hard-won honesty, never for pity, only f...

Sentenced to the Future: A Novel of Innocence, Reinvention, and the Machine Age is a work of fiction by John M. Cobin. Set against a near-future landscape reshaped by artificial intelligence, algorithmic compliance systems, and automated justice, the novel follows a protagonist confronting wrongful conviction, institutional indifference, and the search for renewal in a world where machines increasingly stand between the individual and the state.

Free market economics has advanced dramatically over the past thirty years, driven by the maturing of public choice theory, a resurgence of Austrian economics, and new work in law and economics and regulatory studies. This book introduces and summarizes the most important of those advances for students, academics, policy analysts, and serious readers who want a broad understanding of free market ideas.In fifteen chapters, Dr. John M. Cobin surveys ideas and interest groups in publi...

In AI-Augmented Personal Finance, Dr. John M. Cobin brings the rigor of a public-policy economist and the conviction of a sovereign-minded individual to the most practical question liberty-lovers face: how do you protect and grow wealth in an age of currency debasement, surveillance, and political risk? Drawing on a PhD in public policy and decades advising clients across the United States and Chile, Cobin lays out a clear field guide to building resilient personal finances using gold, sou...

When Dr. John M. Cobin defended himself in an act later confirmed by physical and forensic evidence, he could not have imagined that the Chilean justice system would imprison him for more than five years. In Surviving Chilean Justice, the economist and Baptist pastor turns the analytical tools of public choice on his own ordeal, examining how prosecutors, judges, police, and bureaucrats respond to incentives rather than truth. The result is a rare book: at once a harrowing first-person acc...

Defending Your PhD Dissertation is a survival guide for doctoral candidates who suspect their defense will be anything but friendly. Dr. John M. Cobin, who earned his PhD in public policy at George Mason University in 1996 and has spent decades consulting and reviewing graduate work in the United States and Chile, lays out exactly how to prepare for a committee that is skeptical, divided, or openly hostile. This is not a cheerful pep talk. It is a field manual for the worst-case room: anti...

Before the prison, there was a life. Book One of Bearing the Cross begins with the whole of it: an American boy of Molokan and Italian immigrant stock, a conversion that redirected everything, doctoral study in economics, a preaching ministry, a first marriage that ended in a custody war and a sabotaged congressional campaign, then a second beginning in Chile — a professorship, a marriage to Pamela, a house going up in Reñaca. On 10 November 2019 John M. Cobin defended his own life, and lo...

Bearing the Cross - Book One: Valparaíso (part 1) opens Dr. John M. Cobin's five-volume memoir of his wrongful conviction and the five years he spent in the Chilean prison system. In this first volume, the author recounts his arrest, trial, and the early months of incarceration in Valparaíso, documenting the conditions of confinement and the shock of entering an unjust justice system. Written with the same unflinching, first-person honesty that defines the entire series, this book document...

Bearing the Cross - Book Two: Valparaíso (part 2) continues Dr. John M. Cobin's five-volume memoir of his wrongful conviction and the five years he spent in the Chilean prison system. In this second volume, the author recounts the ongoing imprisonment in Valparaíso, documenting daily life, relationships with fellow inmates, and the continuing struggle for justice within an unjust system. Written with the same unflinching, first-person honesty that defines the entire series, this book docum...

Bearing the Cross - Book Four: Casablanca (part 1) continues Dr. John M. Cobin's five-volume memoir of his wrongful conviction and the five years he spent in the Chilean prison system. In this fourth volume, the author recounts his transfer to Casablanca prison, documenting the new conditions of confinement, the ongoing legal proceedings, and the deepening prison ministry that would come to define his years of incarceration. Written with the same unflinching, first-person honesty that defi...

Bearing the Cross - Book Three: Valparaíso (part 3) and Rancagua continues Dr. John M. Cobin's five-volume memoir of his wrongful conviction and the five years he spent in the Chilean prison system. In this third volume, the author recounts further imprisonment in Valparaíso and the transfer to Rancagua, documenting the shifting conditions of confinement and the ongoing legal battle within an unjust justice system. Written with the same unflinching, first-person honesty that defines the en...

"Should Christians Obey Government?"Is it a sin for you to drive 69 mph in a zone with a posted maximum of 65 mph? Was Christ nailed to the cross for your "sin" of hiring a gardener or a maid who did not have a legitimate "green card" from the immigration authorities? Public policies often entail annoying, costly, and even offensive impositions for Christians. Some policy has been deadly. Indeed, civil government has been more lethal than any infectious disease, plague, or religiou...