"There is no alternative", that's what we usually get told if we start criticizing our economic system; we live in a competitive global economy and we need to be better at managing ourselves than our competitors or else we will be failures, and be punished for our failures.
It's a particularly depressing view of the world that says we can only succeed at the expense of others, and it is a success measured entirely in the accumulation of money and power. And we play it at all levels of society using any advantage given to us, winner takes all. Starting with money and power tends to be an advantage, so the rich do indeed get richer and the poor poorer, and power and influence move in the same direction.
To say that there is no alternative to that philosophy of life, that society cannot organize itself more fairly, is utterly ridiculous; and to pursue it with enthusiasm is deeply immoral. You cannot value and reward people and societies on the basis of an unfair and rigged competition.
Yet that's what Labour and the Tories insist is the case.
There is. There must be. An alternative.