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It's rational to claim that people are efficient and rational consumers even when they aren't, because there are clear economic and political benefits to pretending the claim is true, even though truly rational and efficient individuals can see it's utter nonsense.

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We are approaching a world where every consumer can have perfect information and thus start acting truly rationally. If im buying something >$50 I'll quickly google it just to make sure i can't get it cheaper at another store.

So assuming we significantly enhance a person'a knowledge and senses, we can make them rational in one specific scenario.

We'll have our spherical cows god damnit!

Now, we just need to work on putting computers in front of every other human decision making process and we can finally have homo economicus.

Some markets this sucks like mattress. No two chains sell the same mattress. It may look the same and be made by the same manufacturer, but it will have different logos and model numbers between stores.

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