THX Series Hub: Government That Works
What if we measured government by its ability to create trust, dignity, and real human flourishing?
This series uses the THX frameworks to evaluate public investments—not by ideology, but by utility, emotional impact, and return on flourishing. We ask: Where does government succeed, and how can we tell?
Every post is a case study in systems design—from mail and transit to space and education. We offer a different kind of accountability: one rooted in outcomes that actually improve lives.
✅ Published / In Progress
🔹 How to Know What the Government Should Fund (So Everyone Wins)
Introduces a practical, emotionally intelligent framework for evaluating public investments—using the 12 Utilities, PERMAH, and Prospect Theory to guide decisions that build trust, value, and human flourishing for all.
🔹 THX Case Study: Public Transit — A Hybrid Model for Fairness and Function
Explores how good transit systems create clarity, access, resource value, and social trust.
🔹 THX Case Study: Postal Services — A Mixed Model with Public Purpose
Evaluates the USPS using the 12 Utilities and emotional evocation—showing how simple, reliable access shapes national belonging.
🔹 THX Case Study: AI Safety — Build Now, Hand Off with Safeguards
Explores how applying the 12 Utilities and PERMAH to AI development reframes safety as more than technical—it’s emotional, ethical, and enduring. A roadmap for designing AI that honors human dignity, even after human hands let go.
🔹 THX Case Study: Military & Defense — Build and Stay
Applies THX frameworks to defense and peacekeeping systems—arguing that presence, not just power, is what builds long-term trust, stability, and flourishing. A case for designing with permanence, not just deterrence.
🔹 THX Case Study: Cancer Research — Build & Hand Off with Accountability
Examines how publicly funded research creates breakthrough value—but too often gets handed to private industry without ethical or emotional accountability. A call for policies that preserve Access, Value, and Hope for the public that funded the fight.
🔹 THX Case Study: Why Food Safety Should Stay a Government Responsibility
Applies the 12 Utilities to food safety systems, showing why privatization erodes trust, consistency, and security. A systems-level defense of government’s role in protecting lives at scale—quietly, daily, and without bias.
🔹 What Happens When You Are No Longer Worth the Minimum?
A haunting look at what it means—emotionally and economically—when systems signal that your labor, body, or life is no longer worth the minimum threshold of respect or survival.
🔹 What Would Just Taxation Feel Like? A PERMAH Reframe
Moves beyond numbers to ask: what would taxation feel like if it were rooted in fairness, meaning, and dignity?
🔹 The Taxman Cometh—So We Get Clever
Looks at how people emotionally and behaviorally adapt to tax systems they don’t trust—through avoidance, deflection, and strategic compliance.
🔹 Space Exploration: Government to Private Sector—Then What?
Analyzes how public investments in space technology created value utility, and what we owe to the systems that paved the way. (Planned)
🚀 Coming Soon
Public Education and Emotional Utility
Why the classroom experience should be measured by more than test scores—and how PERMAH can guide better design.Housing & Homelessness: Resource Utility and Systemic Closure
What happens when people experience only loss in their search for stability—and how systems can restore hope.When Government Solves Problems Nonprofits Couldn’t
Examines public intervention in markets where charity and private solutions failed to deliver.The Moral ROI of FEMA: A Post-Hurricane Reflection
Case study on broken promises, public trust, and what emotional closure actually means in crisis response.
🔍 See Also
Christian Nationalism vs Christian Patriotism (Series Hub)
Explore how belief systems shape (and distort) public trust.THX Reflections & Personal Essays (Series Hub)
Where lived experience and systemic design intersect.
🧭 Explore More
Start at the Welcome & Navigation Guide to understand the THX frameworks.
Or return to the full list of Series Hubs to explore other themes.
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