The "rationality" that a lot of traditional (micro-)economic arguments are based on is the one defined by rational choice theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R

The "rationality" that a lot of traditional (micro-)economic arguments are based on is the one defined by rational choice theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory). While economics may be moving on, many journalists, business people, politicians, etc. have not yet gotten the memo, and operate based on very flawed assumptions. I thus thus didn't use a straw man, but rather the operational definition of rationality traditionally employed by mainstream lines of economics. You're onto something with your definition in that a lot of friction and inefficiency today originates from people not coping well with an environment that is fast-changing and very different from our environment of evolutionary adaptiveness.