Steve Horwitz, the great libertarian economist and my friend, died on Sunday. The world is worse off because of it. Steve was a teacher, a father, a husband, a communicator, a mentor, a Rush fan, a scholar, a writer, a pontificator, and much more. I will miss him immensely.

Steve and I didn’t talk that much when we weren’t around each other, but our careers brought us into frequent contact. For many, that’s how Steve was in our lives: dinner when he was in town or three days together at a conference. And of course, he was always also on social media, using it as a medium of inclusion rather than exclusion.

He was an amazing scholar and educator. Looking at social media after his passing, the number of people he influenced, even with a single lecture or social interaction, was profound. Steve lived his life to make the world better, and he succeeded.

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. That realization is illuminating if you take it to heart. It brings humility and respect for others. It levels our world: human beings are trying (usually) to be the best they can be. That attitude goes hand in hand with those traits that shined brightest in Steve: his understanding, humility, openness, happiness, willingness to forgive, gratitude, love, and, fundamentally, kindness. You can’t be a kind person if you believe those who disagree with you are stupid or evil. You can’t be a humble person if you think others have nothing to teach you. You can’t be a good person if you’re constantly treating others as inadequate failures.

Libertarianism, at its best, is as much a disposition as a political philosophy. If you’re humble and caring, then I think, and Steve thought, you should arrive at a more-or-less libertarian worldview. Humility brings restraint: perhaps you shouldn’t try to control others in the name of a “good” that they don’t recognize. Care brings sympathy: if this government force were applied to you, you would regard it as a great injustice—force, after all, is what people resort to when they can’t persuade. Put those together, and you get the basic ingredients of the best type of libertarian. Put those together and you get Steve.

Steve knew humans struggle for meaning and purpose. He knew that, politically, the struggle takes many forms—from totalitarian control to utopian communes. He knew the desire to control other people’s lives was ingrained in humans, but that there is another way. Maybe people could understand that the incredible diversity of human beings does not create a zero-sum game, but is instead positive-sum. Maybe people could understand that the desire to control other people’s lives is a tacit endorsement of others controlling your life when the other political party takes over. Maybe people could understand that resorting to force to instantiate your vision of the “good” is not a sign of strength, it’s a sign of weakness.

Steve spent his life not just communicating those ideas, but living them. He did not separate the world into black hats and white hats, left and right, Republicans and Democrats. He separated the world into those who cared about humans and those who viewed humanity as a means to an end. For Steve, humanity was always the end.

If you want to remember and memorialize Steve, think about the person sitting next to you on the subway who is clearly struggling with a bad day. Think about your old friend who you haven’t called in a long time. Think about the failings you forgive in yourself but don’t forgive in others. Think about what it means to participate in this (to quote Bill Bryson), “supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.”

From the outpouring of affection for Steve that permeated the libertarian world after he passed, it’s clear he lived a successful and exemplary life. Anyone who can achieve a fraction of that respect and affection will have lived a good life.

We should all try to be more like Steve.

(For anyone who wants a great glimpse into Steve’s careful and caring thinking, I invite you to listen to this excellent Free Thoughts episode.)