Gilles d'Aymery was born in 1950 in France. Educated at the Universities of Economics & Law of Toulouse and Paris, and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris, he's traveled extensively and speaks several languages. Aymery has worked in the international oil & gas industry, moved to the U.S. in 1982, eventually changed course to become a computer consultant to small US businesses, and created Swans in 1996. He has been dedicating his time to Swans since January 2001.

A contrarian, Aymery is a long-time advocate of policies that promote cooperation (in opposition to competition), equal allocation and sharing of created wealth entailing redistribution of revenues, collective decision-making on the control of resources (both input and output), and "underconsumptionism" to mitigate growing human-made ecological mayhem. As a contrarian by nature and a secular humanist by affinity, he has never been a member of, or affiliated to a political party, and as a nonreligious person never embraced any ideological chapel. His socio-economic stands are shown in the following charts, whatever their merit may be -- the result of a test, which scores range from +10 to -10 on both axes, were taken in October 2009 (left) and October 2010 (right) at Political Compass.

His work, besides the day-to-day maintenance of the site, the interaction with the contributors -- the flock of Swans -- the endless correspondence with the political and literary hodgepodge, includes assiduous reading, and researching that has resulted in over 400 essays and articles that can be accessed in the yearly archives, at:

1996 || 1997 || 1998 || 1999 || 2000 || 2001 || 2002 || 2003 || 2004 || 2005 || 2006 || 2007 || 2008 || 2009 || 2010 || 2011 || 2012 || 2013

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.
—Hermann Hesse