Eh, easy_install has been a sort of sticking point with me for a while. One of those things that makes me shake my fist at the sky and leaves me a bit baffled that I seem to be the only one pulling his hair out.
So far as I can tell there is no way for easy_install to do anything but install packages. I see an "upgrade" command but it seems to only work if I specify the package name, and I don't see any way to list what version of what is installed. I also don't see any way to remove packages.
In short, this means easy_install turns my system into a mystery grab bag of packages that I can't remove without fishing around in site-packages.
Unless of course I'm missing something, but if I'm missing something it certainly isn't obvious.