Editor’s note: This commentary from Byron Schlomach, who served as director of the Center for Economic Prosperity at the Goldwater Institute, appeared Wednesday on the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs’ website.
People love contests. We have spelling bees, chess tournaments, video game contests, and poker tournaments, just to name a few that are non-physical. Then there are all the sports, too numerous to list but that include football, basketball, hockey, swimming, soccer, and a host of others.
When it comes to sports, nearly a third of the daily television news is often devoted to these contests. Not everybody enjoys every contest, but humans love participating in them, and we love to watch them. One likely reason is that we enjoy the competition inherent in contests. We strive to be better when we directly participate and want to see the contestants we root for get better. That’s the blessing of competition—striving for better, getting better, being better.
Competition in markets works the same magic, and as a result, we all benefit. Domino’s Pizza rebooted their pizzas several years ago because they were losing to the competition. Their pizzas got better. And every pizza consumer benefited.
Competition boosts quality and it boosts efficiency, because the best possible outcome for consumers, and the outcome they choose when it’s possible, is to have both increased quality and decreased prices. And in the process, producers—all producers—do their best to meet such expectations. They do their best to get better.
Competition works in an education context, too. Numerous studies, many published in academic journals, have looked at the impact on public schools that are subjected to private-school competition when school-choice programs are implemented. The overwhelming evidence—and the outcome easily anticipated by all but the most dedicated ideologues—shows that when public schools cease to be monopolies, they improve, at least as evidenced by their students’ standardized test scores.
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