Resumen de Reply to the Caplan and Gochenour critique of Georgism

Fred Foldvary

• This paper refutes the proposition by Caplan and Gochenour that there is no such thing as natural resources because all goods are produced. Caplan and Gochenour use that proposition to argue against the reform proposal of Henry George and his followers, to replace all taxes with a single tax on land value. The rebuttal to Caplan and Gochenour made by this paper is that the discovery of a resource does not constitute its production. The refutation here argues that entrepreneurship and investment create human capital and capital goods, not natural resources. Discovery is not the same as invention or production.