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> Point out that a "perfectly rational" consumer and "perfectly efficient" markets are models - that no market is perfect just as no ball is perfectly round.. people lose their shit

Then they didn't learn economics. Chapter 1 in Mankiw goes into why we learn using frictionless markets of rational actors. I think Chapter 2 or 3 went into market failure.

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Yes. At a shallow - Econ 101 level, economics seems to be about those simple models. Most people who weren't economics majors only took Econ 101 and assumed what they learnt was correct.

It's always pretty obvious that those are idealized abstractions, though. I don't understand the criticism of the rational actor model.

In the same vein, many people criticize economics for seemingly being obsessed with money. It is not, they just use it as a convenient proxy for value.

One shame in much economic teaching is its detachment from empiricism. I had the fortune of good professors, mostly in finance, who forced us to model real markets (and in some cases collect new data). In any case, I don't see someone who misses the Chapter 1 disclaimer finding better value in starting in the deep end.

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