two little words may help to clarify the question:  for whom?

for the rentier, technocrat and trustifarian class that owns/manages the transnat businesses, occupies the revolving doors between boardrooms and parliaments/congresses/military, and always flies first class, the world looks pretty darned good as it's shaping up right now.

it's worth remembering that the first "democracy" (in ancient Greece) was a democracy of land owning adult males.  women, slaves, indentured servants, furriners, and all others simply didn't count.  and for many of the elite, this is still the correct and natural model of democracy.  they use democratic (or at least Robert's Rules) procedures in their elite non-elected governing bodies like the WTO, at Davos, in GATT talks etc.  popular democracy, that's a whole other thing.

they have ever-increasing liberty to drive down the cost of labour, move capital across national borders in the blink of an eye, incorporate here and bank there, dodge taxes and all "restrictions and impositions" on their absolute freedom to seek profit.

and this increase in liberty, plus the enormous improvement in the quality of goods and services accessible to the elite, is what they call "progress".  if someone's swimming in polluted waters or drinking same, if someone's twitching and dying in a rusty trailer on the edge of factory ag land from overexposure to cholinase inhibitors, it sure ain't them or their kids.  that's just an "external" cost, and a trivial one at that -- "the price of progress" doncha know.

so, for those who get to define the dominant public discourse, those who get interviewed ad nauseam on tame corporate media, those who get to tell us what reality isband what's good for us, globalisation is all good.  it's democratic (for them) and it increases liberty (for them) and creates progress -- for them.  which is why they refer contemptuously to welfare states or democratic socialism as backwards, moribund, inefficient, etc. -- these models also create liberty, democracy and progress but for the wrong people :-)

to Bush's base, l'Eétat c'est nous

The difference between theory and practise in practise ...