题目：竞争对于社会的利弊

       Of all powers that push societies to advance, none is greater than that of competition. The need to win and thrive can usually bring out good results from individuals and industries alike. With competition, everybody has to work harder and every business has to create better products and services.

　　For individuals, there is always competition out there, and that is what makes life exciting. Similar excitement is felt watching a horse race in that a horse never runs so fast as when it has other horses to catch up and outpace. Strictly speaking, life is nothing but a competition to be the winner to varying degrees. There seems to be an invisible platform characteristic of fair play in societies, allowing people from all walks of life to freely develop their potential in all fields. On the contrary, for lack of a motivation to succeed, many gifted persons would remain only gifted persons, getting nowhere in any competitive environment. This example implies that competition is the whetstone of talent in any realm of life.

　　So is competition beneficial to business in society. To start with, competition becomes the basis of protection to the consumer by offering more choices, and this serves society well. To be able to survive in the market, companies need to cut costs in order to reduce prices and improve quality in products and services. This is to illustrate that competition is practical incentive to progress. So, even if some people might give competition a name as ugly as sin because some industries are driven out of business by cut-throat competition sometimes; there is no denying that more often a competition-oriented landscape can guarantee more advantages than drawbacks. The same is also true of societies practicing free trade which means that competition comes from anywhere in a win-win game.

　　In most societies, people with competitive spirit are more determined to do more and achieve more while businesses are obliged to learn to become increasingly efficient. Thus, competition is really an essential power to move society ahead, as if by an invisible hand. Ultimately, competition is good as it sets goals for people and fills the social environment with excitement.