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Brad De Long wrote: 
 
> I think I agree with Greg Ransom, that "perfect competition" is an 
> appallingly constricting straitjacket. But it is one that most economists 
> used to and that many economists still wear... 
 
Most economists use "perfect competition" as a rhetorical conceit, 
with which to compare the particular case they are analyzing -- because 
MOST economists are not pure theoreticians.  They do not analyze 
"perfect competition", but the ways in which the problem they are 
studyomg differ from it, and consequently how to explain possible or 
existing outcomes. 
 
Mary Schweitzer, Assoc. Prof., Dept. of History, Villanova University 
(on medical leave) 
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