Marian Tupy: Are Things Actually Getting Better For Humanity? – Melbourne

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Following his 2023 Australian visit, Marian Tupy returns for shows in Melbourne, Sydney and Perth to deliver the data-driven case for optimism that cuts through the doom-and-gloom narrative dominating our western culture.

Marian Tupy is a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and co-author of the acclaimed book Superabundance. As editor of HumanProgress.org, the world’s most comprehensive database tracking improvements in human wellbeing, he’s become a leading voice challenging pessimism with hard evidence. His work demonstrates that human freedom and ingenuity have delivered the most extraordinary era of abundance in history. He’s currently developing an eight-hour course on human progress for Jordan Peterson’s Academy.

Today, the West faces a crisis of confidence. Whilst progressives preach limits, scarcity, and degrowth, demanding we accept declining living standards, the data tells a different story. Western civilisation didn’t stumble into prosperity by accident. The last 200 years of liberal democracy and free market capitalism shattered 300,000 years of human stagnation. Longer lives, healthier children, unprecedented wealth, and greater tolerance aren’t privileges to apologise for, they’re achievements to defend.

Now, he’s bringing that message to Melbourne on Wednesday, 11 February 2026. Tupy will be joined on stage by Peter Kurti is director of the Culture, Prosperity & Civil Society program at CIS. Kurti is also Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Law and Business at the University of Notre Dame Australia.

About the Centre for Independent Studies: The Centre for Independent Studies is an Australian think tank founded in 1976 that promotes free choice, individual liberty, and cultural freedom.