Doug Mackenzie said:  
>Actually I think it's highly useful and quite  
>realistic, provided that you avoid some of the  
>pitfalls of Neoclassical economics.  
  
I don't think Doug Mackenzie and I are very far apart. I agree with most of what he says
after the first seven words of his post. In particular I agree that people have objectives
and usually act in ways that they believe will bring those ends about. I certainly DON'T
think that people are irrational. But if all that rationality means is that people
generally behave in ways that are intended to bring about desired ends, it's a pretty weak
device for explaining anything, precisely because it's rather trivial. People behave in
complicated ways. We should try to understand why they behave the way they do. But as I
say, trying to link that up with some concept economists call rationality doesn't seem to
have got us very far, and is sometimes misleading (as Doug implies when he says we need to
ditch some mainstream pitfalls). This is not to say that optimization models aren't useful
in some contexts.
   
Gary Mongiovi