I have been offline for awhile now. Michelangelo shot me an email the other day alerting me to the fact that Fred Foldvary passed away earlier this month.

Fred was one of the original Notewriters here at NOL. He supported this project from the beginning. Here’s his first ever post for NOL, and here is his last one.

I first met Fred in person at an undergraduate summer seminar hosted by the Independent Institute in Oakland, and I had no idea what he was talking about (he was lecturing on interest rates). His writing over the years has convinced me of the soundness of a land tax, so much so that I call myself a geolibertarian if push comes to shove, and his selflessness with his time will never be forgotten.

Fred was an important voice for liberty once the Ron Paul moment got libertarianism out of its doldrums. The brutalists, led by Jeffrey Tucker, were pushing liberty in a decidedly non-liberal direction and many Ron Paul fans got discouraged by what they found. Fred was one of the people laboring hard to stress liberty’s humane-ness.

Without his encouragement, NOL would have never gotten off the ground.

Fred’s death coincides with the death of another prominent libertarian: Steve Horwitz, who was also instrumental in making libertarianism humane at a time when liberty was being pimped as a creed for conservatives with no hearts.

May they rest in peace.