Hayek: 'Almost Persuaded'

摘要

"It was a lay enthusiasm for Henry George which led me to economics." So wrote Friedrich August von Hayek in a letter to Peter K. Minton in 1962. Elsewhere, he explained that this enthusiasm came about as the result of his having been "exposed to a group of single-taxers" as a first-year law student at the University of Vienna just after World War I. In time, however, Hayek came to reject the Georgist model because of an objection he set forth in his magnum opus, The Constitution of Liberty. This objection constitutes a superficially formidable argument that the defenders of Georgism seem almost wholly to have neglected. The reason for this neglect is probably threefold: First, the argument is readily overlooked, occupying, as it does, a single paragraph in a book of more than 500 pages. Second, it is easily confused with a different argument―one that has been widely, and to the satisfaction of probably all Georgists, conclusively, refuted. Third, it is expressed following a technically inaccurate definition on Hayek's part of the model to which his objection is directed. However, the validity of his objection does not depend upon the accuracy of his definition, and his argument calls for a scholarly rejoinder, not merely in view of its author's towering prestige, but due to the fact that, once disentangled from its flawed context and correctly understood, it seems at first blush compelling on its merits.