HUMILITY BRINGS RESTRAINT.

On occasion, we've viewed posts by Steven Horwitz, such as this recent observation on the inevitability of majoritarian tyranny and this joint effort with Art Carden on the follies of the vulgar Welfare Economics Paradigm.  Word reaches Cold Spring Shops that Professor Horwitz has crossed the final summit.

Steve was a liberal. He was a liberal who believed in the human‐​affirming values entailed by liberalism, values that are not primarily political, but personal. Being a liberal means, on some level, that you love people. Steve loved people, and that love was returned.

But people are messy. We’re constrained by circumstance. We’re manipulated by our environment. But if you’re a liberal, you know that’s true of everyone, even those who pretend to have the moral and epistemological authority to rise above it and rule us. Those people pretend they are better, but they’re usually worse.

Steve saw through that. He saw through the pretensions of power and authority to the basic fact that we’re all trying to do the best with what we have.

He studied economics at George Mason with Donald "Cafe Hayek" Boudreaux.  "Steve is a former student of mine; he excelled in a graduate course in Industrial Organization that I taught. I forget which year exactly; it was either 1987 or 1988. But I can tell you exactly where in the classroom Steve sat and engaged so creatively with the material."  RIP.