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 Originally Posted by wufwugy
I added the bolded. That's where the assumption of rationality comes from. Economists say that when people do things, they have rationale for doing them. They assume this rationale is a conscious/subconscious valuation of net benefit, which is another way of saying that which is most desired. They claim desire is adequate since costs and benefits really just boil down to desire. When you're buying a burger for $5, really what you're saying is that you desire that burger more than any other $5 item, $5 of work, or the next best option (like $6 tacos or instead eating nothing and dieting like you had been thinking about).
But economists don't care about the actual reasons, right? Which strips the term "rational" of any meaning. Especially since you claim that in economics, all behavior is by definition rational.
Instead of "Agents act rationally", you can replace it with "Agents act based on reasons that are irrelevant to rest of our theory." Which, again, might as well be "Agents act."
I'm still confused why they even bother to use the word rational.
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