[stephencanon]

I think the economic notion of "rationality" actually gets a lot less credit than it deserves. While there are definitely situations in which consumers do not behave rationally (in the economic sense), they are relatively few and far between.

There are lots of situations in which consumers do not behave according to an observer's (non-economic) notion of "rationally". This is rarely a failure of economic rationality, and much more often a failure of the observer to understand the consumer's notion of utility or cost (or both).