EXCERPT Only through the principle of competition has political economy any pretension to the character of a science. J.S. Mill, Principles of Political Economy To complete the metamorphosis of the ordinary man into the ‘average man’, it is not enough to juggle a few discrete, already domesticated units using statistics; one must also know how to rig out their rational ferocity in the fine cloth of the ‘differential’ and the ‘optimal’. This explains economists’ infatuation with the rudiments of the calculus of variations, their thirst for the minimax and for the hunt for equilibria…