Writing Test 3.7

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“Globalization” refers to growing economic and cultural interconnectedness between different regions of the world. Because modern transportation and electronic communication has made commercial relationships between distant people easier than ever before, the world is rapidly becoming a single interactive zone. This phenomenon has brought several unanticipated benefits.
The most commonly cited virtue of globalization is that it allows developing nations to use their low costs of living to their advantage. Because workers in developing nations can survive on less money, the production of goods in the developing world is significantly cheaper. This encourages business with those economies, fostering economic wellbeing. Southeast Asia, for example, has seen annual economic growth, allowing its citizens to live more comfortably today than their parents did only a generation ago.
A secondary but no less noteworthy advantage is that world trade creates competition that would otherwise be missing. As the rise of capitalism has demonstrated, competition forces the producers of goods to keep their goods’ quality as high or higher than that of their competitors and, simultaneously, their costs as affordable as possible. This means, in general, better goods for lower prices among those countries that participate in the global system. Those that do not, meanwhile, see prices climb.
Finally, globalization has cultivated a mutual reliance between countries that puts pressure on governments to make safer and healthier choices. Countries that rely on one another’s business are far less likely to go to war, for instance, and also must listen to the environmental concerns of their business partners. Countries that pollute excessively will see less business and therefore must learn to curb environmental damage.