These conclusions do not mean that functional form assumptions are either useless or inconsequential for economic analysis. Functional form assumptions may be helpful for deriving explicit formulas for empirical estimation or simulations or simply to lend insight into the problem structure, and they certainly can help determine the magnitude of comparative statics effects. But with economic knowledge at its current state, functional form assumptions are never really convincing, and this lends importance to the question I ask and to its answer: One can indeed often draw valid general comparative statics inferences from special cases.