The existing law regards lower prices as an unalloyed blessing, fining stores that collude to avoid them. That perspective is the right one in markets where shoppers choose purely rationally. But rational economic man is no drinker.
It\’s irrational to get blitzed? That every human society has had a socially accepted method of doing so (booze, drugs, dancing, some even praying) might lead you to the opposite conclusion, that it\’s entirely rational, a reaction to the universe and our place in it.
“But rational economic man is no drinker.”
Try the Paradox of Choice, a lecture by Prof Barry Schwartz:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=paradox+of+choice&meta=
Ah, this’ll be a good wheeze. You can choose only those things that a rational person would choose to do. We’ll decide what those things are.
Anyone rational would avoid socialism like the plague!