How I Discovered
the Writings of Henry George

Fred Foldvary

[25 January 2006]

I attended the national libertarian convention in San Francisco in July 1977. There was a debate on Georgism between a libertarian and the Georgist speaker, Terry Newland. I thought that Newland won the debate, and spoke with him. At that time, I was writing my first book, The Soul of Liberty, and I included Henry George and the land tax in my chapter on economics. I contacted the Henry George School in San Francisco, and was invited to give a talk there. I later was selected to be on the Board of Directors of HGSF, when Bob Scrofani and Alana Hartzog were employed there, and also taught some classes for SFHG. I became president of the board for a couple of years around 1980-1981.

In 1981 I wrote an article titled "Geo-libertarianism" for Land and Liberty.

If I had not attended that convention, I probably would not have become a Georgist. In 1987 I began graduate school in economics at George Mason University and obtained a Ph.D. in economics in 1992.

My Georgist knowledge was useful in writing a term paper on "real estate and the business cycle" for my class on macroeconomics. A revised version was published in AJES in 1997.