Leland R. Beaumont is an independent wisdom researcher who is seeking real good. He is currently developing the Applied Wisdom curriculum on Wikiversity.
This article is adapted from the previously published article Who owns the Productivity dividend?
Let’s consider this simple story.
Hans Schumacher is a kind man who has owned the family shoe business for many years. Shoe manufacturing technology continues to improve, and it is time to replace his obsolete Mark II shoe machine with a new Mark V model.
Today, the Mark II Shoe machine manufactures 10,000 shoes each day requiring 10 workers to operate it.
The new Mark V machine is twice as fast. It can manufacture 20,000 shoes each day with 10 operators, or 10,000 shoes each day with only 5 operators.
The new machine is arriving, and Hans faces a difficult choice[1]. He can:
1. Retain his 10 employees, manufacture 20,000 shoes each day and hope to find enough customers, perhaps by reducing prices and increasing marketing, to sell all those shoes. Here the productivity dividend —the benefits resulting from increased productivity—is shared between Hans, who is selling more shoes, and the customers who are getting shoes at a lower price. Hans knows that the number of feet in the world remains relatively constant, so he is concerned that it may be difficult to sell so many more shoes.
2. Layoff 5 employees, retain 5 employees, and manufacture 10,000 shoes each day with only half the number of employees. Here the productivity dividend goes to Hans, and the 5 employees laid off become unemployed. Hans would feel bad for the loyal employees he would layoff but sometimes that’s just business.
3. Some blend of these options, such as 16,000 shoes each day with 8 employees.
4. Retain all 10 employees, but have them work half-time, and continue to manufacture 10,000 shoes each day. He now has choices in how to pay the employees. Based on hours worked, it would be fair to pay them half what they were getting earlier. Based on productivity, he could afford to pay them the same as they were making earlier. He liked that idea.
This inspired him to imagine another option. What if he could find 5 employees who would volunteer to leave in return for receiving ongoing severance payments? With the money saved by this reduced workforce he could create a productivity dividend fund. This fund is the direct result of the increased productivity. The resulting savings could go into the fund, and the employees that volunteered to leave would receive payments from the fund as their share of the productivity dividend.
[1] I recognize this analysis neglects the purchase price of the Mark V machine, material costs, cost of sales, and other costs not related to manufacturing labor. Presenting this simple model as a thought experiment allows us to focus on alternatives for distributing the productivity dividend.
The new Mark V Shoe machine manufactures 10,000 shoes each day requiring only 5 workers to operate it. The savings could go into the productivity dividend fund and be distributed to the displaced workers.
This raised several important questions he needed to consider:
- Would this undermine the work ethic?
- Has anything like this been done before?
- Is this starting down the slippery slope toward socialism, or even communism?
- How would the displaced workers spend their free time?
- Would this be fair?
- Would the business become uncompetitive?
Hans had serious issues to deliberate before making his decision.
This is the first in a three-part series exploring the future of productivity. Re-visit The Fulcrum for the next installment in this series on Friday, August 18, where we dive into the difficult concept of deliberation on the effects of increased productivity.
Luis Benavides on the Night Ruth López Was Taken 
Noah Bullock on Ruth López’s Case 
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.