The followling only compliments the Terms of Use that all agreed to when they signed up. If you happen to find something that contradicts here, the Terms of Usage will take precident.
GUIDING PRINCIPLES
Our goal for PeakProsperity.com is to draw attention to the important messages contained within in the Crash Course and its companion book, Prosper!. At the heart of Peak Prosperity lies a commitment to intellectual integrity and curiosity. It’s where thought-leaders and truth-seekers converge, challenging the unsustainable status quo through facts and empathetic discourse, cultivating a resilient and inclusive community. We will be civil with each other, respectful, thoughtful, and considerate. Anything that causes people to feel unwelcome or unsafe will be discouraged or removed, as will things that serve to detract from our high standard of intelligent discourse. Our mission is to engage, not to repel. Posts must be data-rich, fact-based, and constructive, especially if they are critical. We ask that all critical commentary be accompanied by thoughtful suggestions for improvement—or not offered at all.
Terms of Use
In addition to the general terms of use at Peak Prosperity, we expect the below terms of use to be adhered to while in engaged in discussions.
We expect people to maintain the same level of civility in posting that a polite wedding guest would have at the reception table — before drinks are served.
We expect and require courteous interactions everywhere comments can be posted to the site. In an online community, social courtesies are observed, just as at a physical gathering. One doesn’t monopolize the conversation, pound the table about a single point until others’ eyes glaze over, insult their host or their fellow guests, or spew patently offensive slurs. Tactfulness is a reasonable expectation within a voluntary community.
Please ask yourself these questions before making a post:
- Does my post constructively illuminate an issue or answer a specific question?
- If constructively critical, is it emotionally neutral and considerate? Does it offer specific, actionable solutions?
- If asking a question, is it a bona fide question that will lead to an increased understanding of the “Thee Es” and related topics?
Members should strive to post with integrity, accuracy and courtesy. We expect that members will not abuse their anonymity by posting things that a polite individual would refrain from saying in person.
We expect members to take reasonable care to make sure that their posts are accurate and always use verifiable facts to support an argument. We expect members to do their best to offer constructive solutions to problems. And expect members to remember that this site is about strengthening our communities, not tearing them down or otherwise damaging them.
Finally, these terms are updated from time to time, as we do our best to improve them from the learnings of our interactions with readers. Your continued use of Peak Prosperity comes with the responsibility to review these periodically and comply with the updated material.
Guidelines and Rules
For posts that stray outside of our admittedly subjective boundary lines, we reserve the right to modify or remove any given post to conform to our definition of “acceptable posting.”
Posts may be edited or removed for any of the following:
- Ad hominem: Personal attacks
- Illegality: Posts which are in violation of any law or which openly advocate breaking the law
- Error: Posts containing information known to be false
- Infringement: Posts violating copyright laws
- Abuse: Hateful, taunting, violent, or harassing posts
- Invasion: Posts that are invasive of personal privacy
- Hijacking: Posts in blatant disregard of purpose for which a specific thread was created
- Bloviating: Sucking up too much of the discussion with over-frequent/too long post or rants
- Irrelevance: Posts that do not add enough (or anything at all) towards advancing the topic under discussion
- Tone-Deafness: Ignoring corrective feedback from the site managers/moderators
- Inappropriateness: Posts containing over-the-top abusive language. This includes excessive or threatening profanity. While this forum may discuss topics about sexism, racism, pornography, and/or intolerance of any social/demographic/cultural group, however, members should never make posts that are overtly sexist, racist, contain pornography, or promote intolerance of any social/demographic/cultural group.
- Spam: Unsolicited and/or commercial advertisements
Here’s a handy graphic. Our hope at PP is to operate at the topmost level(s) of Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement, and avoid the lower ones completely:
Please be sure to always include a link to the source for any posted material. A snippet and a link, please. Do not post entire articles. We respect copyright laws here.
No posting IN ALL CAPS! This means titles, especially. We view this as the equivalent of shouting. We’ll either replace the capital letters with lowercase letters, or we’ll delete the post if that is too troublesome.
We really don’t want to remove anyone’s posts or censor anyone’s words, and it is a very rare event for us, but we need to make sure this community stays focused on the reasons we are here. Please be responsible for your words, and do your best to ensure that none of your own posts ever need to be removed.
Thank you for your understanding.
How to Chat Directly with Chris
If you wish to contact Chris Martenson directly, he asks that you send a private message before attempting to start any chats. As you can imagine, it would be easy for Chris to become overwhelmed with chats popups, so this will help make it easier for him to give everybody in our Tribe the individual attention they deserve!
Please respect this request!!
Operating Procedure
Sometimes we receive comments challenging the way we manage this site.
We listen to such feedback and make changes if convinced by the logic. But that happens pretty rarely. Much more often, we and the reader end up “agreeing to disagree”.
In the spirit of being as completely transparent as possible about the “standard operating procedure” for discussion on this website, here’s where we stand on some of the more common challenges we receive:
- Triggered Beliefs: Each of hold beliefs that we feel strongly about; that’s part of being human. Also part of being human is being vulnerable to having one or more of those beliefs triggered in a way that causes us to become emotionally-charged if a core belief is somehow threatened. When that happens, our limbic system often takes over our thinking and actions, pushing rationality aside. On this site, we expect each of us to self-monitor our emotional state and to take some time away from the keyboard if we experience ourselves becoming “too heated” in response to what we’re reading. A common pitfall we observe is that a triggered reader will insist that others not only respect – but share – their belief, and if that fails, will often demonize those holding a different perspective. Beliefs are subjective, and highly personal. You are absolutely entitled to hold whatever beliefs you want, but you are not permitted here to project them onto others. That’s why we insist on data-driven discussion here, using empirical evidence and facts. If you persist in pushing a pet belief here without fact-based validation, it’s highly likely your posts will be moderated.
- Demanding Change: We’ll sometimes get feedback – often from someone with a triggered belief (see bullet above) – that insists we start, or stop, doing something they feel passionately about. When at a musical performance, do you interrupt the pianist from your seat in the audience and holler “No! No! Play it this way instead”. We didn’t think so. But every so often, someone will feel strongly that we should be doing things differently, and publicly demand that we change how we write, or the views we hold, or how we approach getting our message out. As mentioned earlier, we listen to all constructive feedback – and if convinced, make revisions. But we are resolute that we do not “owe” anybody the right to change our behavior simply because they want us to. We have spent years cultivating our content and this community in accordance to our own personal principles and integrity. It has worked well for us and the millions of readers that are attracted to this website each year. We aren’t going to jeopardize that, or violate our own integrity, no matter how loudly someone may shout for us to.
- Making Accusations: On rare occasions, someone may imply or outright declare we’re guilty of some offense. We respect the right of each individual to have their own opinions. We don’t require that anyone needs to agree with us, or even like us, for that matter. But as should be crystal clear by now, our integrity is very important to us. If you’re going to call it into question, it better be backed up with documented evidence. Hey, everyone makes mistakes or can express themselves inartfully at times. If we’ve erred, we’ll set things right. But our tolerance for unsupported finger-pointing is pretty much zero.
- Paid Content: Every so often we’ll get criticized for charging for the subscription to our premium content. Look, we offer over 90% of the content produced on this site to the public for free. That content production, plus the design, operation, maintenance, and continued improvement of Peak Prosperity and its related services (seminars, speaking events, book writing, etc) is costly – and requires the full-time dedication of Chris and team. It’s how they make their livelihood. So to demand that their deepest and most directive insights be offered free-of-charge sounds to them as impudent as demanding free service from your carpenter, doctor or accountant. If you find value in this site, it’s the paid content model that makes all of it (the public material included) possible. If you’re really dying to read an article or two, just subscribe for a single month. It’s only $30 and during that month you can read every article ever written here. And if you’re not willing to part with $30, you don’t have much credibility to stand on if demanding we forgo our entire income.
If any of the above strikes you as unacceptable given your personal principles, priorities or desires from this site, we won’t begrudge you at all for taking time away from us (in either the short or long term). We understand that, despite trying to be as inclusive as possible, we can’t be all things to all people. We respect that our approach may not work for everyone and we in no way want to be guilty of trying to pressure an uncomfortable reader to remain.
Consequences
Consequences for violating these guidelines may include a warning, editing or removal of the offending material, or suspension of posting privileges, potentially up to and including account deactivation and/or permanent banning from posting on the site.
Moderators have the complete authority to act in what they see as the site’s best interests. The line is not always crisp, and the job is not easy. They deserve your support.
If You See a Problem, Flag It
We can’t be everywhere at once. When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. Replying encourages bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.
Reporting Feedback
If you have any further questions about how things should work here, feel free to open a new topic in the site feedback category. You may also initiate a support request through our chat bot in the corner of the screen.