Isn't this 'Vote with your wallet'? I know I vote with my wallet. Everything I buy is a vote for how I want the world to be, and what products I want to see flourish and prosper. I also evangelize these products to others so they get on board too, because I alone will not make much of a dent, unless I recruit others to purchase it too.
* No amount of personal spending decisions can advance systemic changes like better public transport or more careful military funding. These require governmental action.
* With our wallet, we can only choose between those alternatives which are offered. In many cases, we can only choose between bad options.
* Voting with our wallet requires immunity against professional PR campaigns, time (for researching on what to buy), money (to afford options which are better according to personal views but more expensive), friends who appreciate instead of belittle our purchasing decisions, ...
In the end, I believe the story "vote with your wallet" internalizes a form of victim blaming: The consumers are blamed for their irresponsible purchasing decisions, but the responsibility really is with the companies and governments.
Of course, not spending consciously is also not a solution. But we obtain greater leverage by using our influence on society. Only few of us are editor-in-chiefs of important newspapers or important politicians, but most of us can engage in visually powerful protests which are also able to generate political wind.
While there are some dictatorships out there, in the democratic world the people voting with their wallets and the people in charge of government are the exact same people. Which means that any governmental change comes by what is ultimately the same mechanism.
> we can only choose between those alternatives which are offered.
Only in the short-term, though. The wallet can also communicate what one wants in the future, and that is only limited by what is fundamentally possible. Of course, often people don't actually want anything better, even if they say they do. Talk is cheap. The neat thing about the wallet is that it proves what people actually want.