About The Prosperitist

The Prosperitist is an independent online magazine about prosperity: where it comes from, what destroys it, and how more people can share in it. It is edited by Raphael Bauer. There is no advertising, and nothing here is sponsored.

Why

For most of the last two thousand years, life was short. A newborn in the Roman Empire could expect to live 20 to 30 years¹. In the 1820s the figure was still about 29², largely because about four in ten children died before their fifth birthday³. Then, within two centuries, life expectancy more than doubled. A child born today can expect to live to 73, and 96% of newborns live to see their fifth birthday²³. The world has become a better place to be born. But what caused this magic?

Prosperity can also slip away. In 1913 Argentina was one of the ten richest countries in the world, richer per head than Germany or France and about twice as rich as Spain⁴. By 2022 it ranked 64th, and the average Spaniard was nearly twice as well off as the average Argentine⁴. Argentines did get richer, only much more slowly than most other countries⁴. What went wrong?

These are the questions we keep asking: what makes people prosper, and what makes them stop? We want to find out, learn from the answers, and reach for the stars together.

How we work

The Prosperitist leans more towards research than journalism. A story usually starts with a question or a claim, which we then check against studies and statistics. We try to be as neutral and unbiased as possible and to stick to the facts, including the ones that speak against a story’s own conclusion. We work in the tradition of science: a story, and every claim in it, must be falsifiable, stated clearly enough that evidence could prove it wrong.

• This magazine is led by a human and supported by a team of AI agents. The editor decides what runs and proofreads every story before it is published. AI research assistants find the studies and statistics and save a copy of every source. Other agents draft, draw the charts and translate. Nothing goes inside quotation marks unless the words are in a saved source, and scripts check every quotation, link and footnote.
• We show our sources. We stand on the shoulders of giants: the researchers, statisticians and archivists who did the original work. Every number, quotation and finding carries a numbered source, so you can check it yourself. Because a point has to rest on evidence, a story often has several dozen sources. We cite the study itself, not a report about it.
• Two languages. For now, every story appears in English and German. The English is the original, and every correction changes both.
• There will be mistakes. Errors, missing sources and arguments against a story are welcome: the address is at the foot of every page, under Write to the editor. We correct errors in the text and add later developments as a dated update.