Crime Against Humanity: Pensée Unique in Economics, 21

What is perfect information?
His big books told Wil Coyote to save this tenet for last; dulcis in fundo, they read. He’s still wondering why.
For a number of reasons, Wil. For one thing, of all the props of the neoclassical stage, this is the most central one. For another thing, being a central assumption of the mainstream school of thought, it is a textbook case of an “everybody knows that” everybody takes for granted without even thinking about it, and which anyone caring about his position would hardly dare to question. For another thing more, while it is passed off as an innocuous assumption, quite to the contrary it is an enormity; as Werner puts it, “To assume perfect information is a monstrous distortion of reality. It creates a fictional world that is not just a little different from reality, but one that is diametrically opposed to what constitutes the very essence of the world we live in. All economic activity is based on the very fact that information is not perfectly and equally distributed.” And for another thing more, Werner still, “Since the fiction of ‘perfect information’ is a standard assumption, most economists have become thoroughly hardened to its enormity.”
So vast is this enormity that I’ll confine our review to a brief overflight of the regions of this terra almost incognita that Werner has mapped for us, sharing his introductory comment: here’s a glimpse at how a parallel neoclassical universe of perfect information would look like, if it ever did exist at all.
Before we fly through the looking glass and this terra almost incognita materialises on the horizon, Wil Coyote suggests that I clarify the basic terms which are apparently obvious: ‘perfect information’. Good point, Wil.
I call it ‘the logistics of data and information’. It has been said that the definition of datum is ‘anything that can be known’, and it could be said that the definition of information is ‘valuable datum’, which implies that it has been received, confronted and evaluated. I’d say that a suitable definition of logistics is ‘anything needed, anywhere needed, anytime needed’. That said, I would define what I call the logistics of data and information as ‘any data and information needed, anywhere needed, anytime needed’. I guess that could be a good definition of ‘perfect information’. Wil Coyote nods in agreement: now we can fly through the looking glass and overfly the parallel neoclassical universe where everyone knows everything already and therefore…