The Constitution of Real Prosperity

Version 1, November 10, 2026.

Preamble

Real Prosperity exists to help build an economy in which people have the freedom, knowledge, resources and opportunity to prosper through their own efforts, and in which businesses prosper because the people they serve do.

We write these principles down so they can be checked, so they outlast the people who wrote them, and so they bind us before they bind anyone else.

Article I. What we mean by prosperity

1. Prosperity is more than money. Health, the people we love, what we know, the freedom to choose, peace of mind and faith are all wealth. Money is part of prosperity, not the whole of it.
2. Prosperity is not a fixed pie. One person's success does not have to come out of another's. An honest business can do well by its owners, its people, its customers and its neighbors at the same time.
3. We are not against wealth or ambition. Build something great and do well by it. We are not interested in taking what people produce and handing it to someone else.
4. We aim for prosperity common enough that the gap between people flattens into a shallow wave: small swings, with the whole line riding high.

Article II. The foundational principle: capability, not dependency

1. Help should strengthen people's ability to act for themselves. It should not create a permanent dependence on whoever provides it.
2. Dependency can be made by anyone who provides something people need: a business, a charity, a government program, an employer, or Real Prosperity itself. A company that traps its customers, narrows their choices or makes leaving harder than joining creates dependency just as surely as a badly designed assistance program. This principle applies to all of them equally, and to us first.
3. In practice, that means we:
   • teach rather than merely provide, wherever teaching is possible;
   • remove barriers rather than create obligations;
   • reward initiative, effort and contribution, without pretending everyone starts with the same opportunities;
   • protect the freedom to choose, including the freedom to leave a business, a service or an arrangement;
   • give real help when it's needed, without making independence the price of compassion.
4. Not everyone can become fully self-reliant, and some people need help for a long time, or for good. That is not a failure, and compassion does not end where independence can't be reached.
5. Self-reliance is not self-sufficiency. A prosperous society depends on people helping one another freely, trading value and carrying each other's burdens. The goal is not that nobody receives help. The goal is that nobody is left in poverty.
6. The question we ask before endorsing any business practice, economic proposal, charitable effort or educational program: Does this leave people more capable, more independent and more free than they were before? If the answer is no, we examine what we're doing.
7. Before any new way of making money, we ask the same question of ourselves: does this make our customers more free, or more dependent on us?

Article III. The five principles

The foundational principle is a judgment. These five are how it is checked in business. A pledge costs nothing to sign, so each principle comes with a test anyone can run on a company, without asking it for permission.

1. Leaving is easy.

   Test Can a customer export everything they put in, in a format another tool can read, without asking anyone?

2. Pricing is legible.

   Test Does the price page say what one unit costs and what a unit is?

3. Privacy is the default.

   Test Is there a public list of every piece of data the product collects, and why?

4. Accountability is independent.

   Test Does someone other than the party being judged also hold the evidence it's judged by?

5. The principles live in the structure.

   Test Does the charter hold the principles, so a future owner can't quietly remove them?

Article IV. The rule above the principles

No person, organization, or financial interest -- including the founder -- shall be exempt from the principles of Real Prosperity.

Article V. How we measure ourselves

1. We measure the success of our help not by how many people depend on it, but by how much freedom, capability and opportunity it creates.
2. Our own work answers to the five tests in public. When something of ours fails a test, we say so, with the date, and say what we're doing about it.
3. A study or finding about anyone's work, ours included, stays published as it was written. A newer reading is added beside it, never in place of it.
4. Nobody passes all five tests completely, and we don't pretend to. What matters is which way someone is moving, and whether they're willing to fix one thing and be read again.
5. Paying us never changes what we say about anyone.

Article VI. Faith and fellowship

1. The founder's faith shaped these principles, and it is no secret. Real Prosperity is not affiliated with or endorsed by any church, and it is not an effort to convert anyone.
2. You don't have to share anyone's faith to be part of this. You do have to share the principles.
3. We'd rather be corrected than be right. If someone shows that one of our ideas is mistaken, we want to be willing to admit it, and to change it here.

Article VII. Changing this constitution

1. Every change is published with its date and its reason. Earlier versions stay published, so anyone can see what changed.
2. A change may strengthen, clarify or add to the principles in Articles II through V. No change may remove one, weaken one, or exempt anyone from one.
3. Until Real Prosperity has a governing body of more than one person, the founder holds this constitution in trust and is the first person bound by it. Forming that body, and handing this constitution to it, is part of the work.

Article VIII. Where this binds

This document is a statement of intent until it is written into the legal charter of each organization that carries Real Prosperity's name. The fifth principle asks every company whether its charter holds its principles. Until ours does, we fail that test, and we say so.