Sometimes I feel like a lone voice in the wilderness – we need an alternative to neoliberal economics – then every so often there’s words of support.

We might reflect on how we enable corporations to play stealth games with our expectations. While consumer activism has undoubtedly brought about some limited good in relation to environmental and trade justice concerns, sometimes change itself seems to have dwindled into a set of consumer choices whereby fairness, for instance, is just another “option”. Starbucks’ conscience-soothing “fair trade” range invited the question of whether everything else it – and others with similar options – had on offer was tacitly unfair trade. While there is a real debate to be had about whether consumer campaigning for “fair”, “green” and “local” choices offers limited or substantive change, the truth is we have lost the ability to imagine economic alternatives to neoliberal fundamentalism. The more the focus remains exclusively on market excesses and abuses, the less we think about the inbuilt flaws of corporate globalisation.

Of course, when dissident alternatives enter the discussion from areas such as Brazil and Venezuela, where there have been concerted efforts to reclaim the local from private corporations, they too are subject to rebranding as “lost regions”, troublespots that threaten the stability of the world mocha order. Conversely, there is admiration for India or China when the local is appropriated, privatised and patented, actions that have worse consequences for the vegetable-cart vendor and small farmer than for coffee shops and bakeries in affluent countries. As long as we place our resolute faith in a global economic system that has shown itself to be rickety and ruthless, we remain susceptible to believing “the world is flat”, a world where, Thomas Friedman notes happily, our “choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke – to slight nuances of taste, slight nuances of policy, slight alterations in design”. Is another world still possible? Priyamvada Gopal, The Guardian.

Instead of the left-wing politicians arguing over how much public services should be cut – we should be discussing – neoliberalism what’s the alternative – nothing else we give us success.