By Noah Dawson

I must first begin by apologizing to my readers for my lack of writings recently. I had intended to write much more over the past few months, but my ambitions did not result in much writing, and instead resulted in an excess of research, which itself led to further research. But I am writing again now, and I have something to say: Human life has value. While I wish this was an obvious point, the intentional and unintentional misanthropy I have noticed grasping at modern intellectualism is one of the things that prompted my retreat into my books, looking for a weapon to slay the beast, if one could be found. Indeed, I think I have found such a weapon, but formalizing it in a way that it can be understood took further research. I think I have now come to a point where I can argue it forcefully, and that will be the topic of my piece for next week, though even next week’s writing will necessarily be but a summary of the argument.

I must also apologize for the potentially overly formal (and admittedly somewhat pretentious) tone of next week’s writing. I wanted to make it more clear, but that presented me with two issues. The first is that, while I am a writer, I know that I have limits in my skills. As much as I would like to present my argument in the most eloquent or casual way possible, that is beyond my skillset.

The other limiting factor is my desire to be brief. I have added expanded explanations where necessary to illustrate the argument but adding too may inhibit comprehensibility itself. I may still later revisit the topic and present it in a longer form. Maybe a book? Dangit, Trent, I think your idea of a paperback collection of your columns planted an idea in me! I had even considered skipping writing a short version and simply serializing a long version, but I decided against that for several reasons. Most directly was my desire to get something written, as even taking a serialized approach would mean taking a longer break to at least make a plan of the work beforehand. In order to create a longer form anyways, I would have needed to have written out the argument in a summary form for my own sake. Finally, I wanted to try to keep my columns self-contained. (I do see the irony in writing that sentence in a preface to a column that won't be released until next week.)

As a final note, one of the central parts of my argument is the nature of value. In my argument, I heavily lean on the ideas formalized by Austrian School economists, especially Ludwig von Mises’ work “Human Action,” (which my regular readers might know is one of my favorite books). Specifically, I had that book in mind when discussing the importance of the subjectivity and ordinality of value in my argument. Still, prior knowledge of this concept isn’t necessary to understanding the argument, as those ideas are explained in my presentation, and further implications can be intuited from the context. I do still encourage people to read Human Action if they want a more thorough view on how these concepts apply to catallactics/economics.

So, remember to check next week’s Noah’s Remark for my piece “The Value of Human Life,” as well as the various other guest columns we will be presenting as a part of our annual Thanksgiving tradition.