Anti-Capitalist Sentiment (with some morality)

[CoccoBill]

For-profit schools. Imagine you're running one, and you're facing competition, as one does. Your investors demand profits, as they do. To make yourself more competitive, is it easier and cheaper to

a) cut costs
b) invest in development?

Let's say you're an idiot and you choose b), do you

a) invest in marketing
b) invest in better teachers, curriculum, facilities etc and hope someone eventually notices?

[Renton]

For-profit schools. Imagine you're running one, and you're facing competition, as one does. Your investors demand profits, as they do. To make yourself more competitive, is it easier and cheaper to

a) cut costs
b) invest in development?

Let's say you're an idiot and you choose b), do you

a) invest in marketing
b) invest in better teachers, curriculum, facilities etc and hope someone eventually notices?

In all likelihood, all of the above. A properly run business will devote resources to increasing cost effectiveness and development, to marketing and to improving the product, in a ratio of expenditure appropriate to maximizing profit and potential for expansion.

You frame the thought experiment to evoke a response of "worse, cheaper product, sold for a higher price," but do you see that result in the private sector for goods like smartphones and LCD televisions, or services like restaurants or package delivery? Absolutely not. Generally, we enjoy cheaper and higher quality goods and services over time in our capitalistic system. The left-leaning among us irrationally ascribe radically different expectations of how the free-market would handle services that are essential*, but in most cases, those services would respond just as robustly to free trade.

*Never mind the inaccuracy of that word in describing some of them. Ask the truly poor of the 3rd world to find out what essential really is.