> Do conditions of perfect competition obtain in this market? Is there perfect information for all market participants? Are all offerings in the market perfectly fungible? Are entry to and exit from the market frictionless? Are all other conditions held equal? If these are not true, then your model of supply and demand is uncoupled from reality and will give wrong results.
This is a red herring on the strawman's shoulder. Good. Grief.
I really think you would be much enlightened to listen to Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics audio book. It's really long, but covers this sort of thing just oh so well.
It will help you to answer questions like: how come people in the Soviet Union were starving to death while crops rotted in the field? Among many others...
The questions I raised above are the theoretical conditions under which laws of supply and demand operate perfectly. Thomas Sowell is a political economist who explains economics anecdotally and in rather rudimentary fashion.
I am talking about the rigorous microeconomic theory which involves using calculus is required to actually pass an economics course or analyze a commodity market. If you are not familiar with concepts like elasticity, substitution, or the difference between consumer and producer surplus then I suggest you look deeper into microeconomics.
> The questions I raised above are the theoretical conditions under which laws of supply and demand operate perfectly. Thomas Sowell is a political economist who explains economics anecdotally and in rather rudimentary fashion.
> I am talking about the rigorous microeconomic theory which involves using calculus is required to actually pass an economics course or analyze a commodity market. If you are not familiar with concepts like elasticity, substitution, or the difference between consumer and producer surplus then I suggest you look deeper into microeconomics.
The claim that economics requires "math" has no support - just follow the epistemology on the claim and it's a dead end. It is always stated matter-of-factly as if it is prima facie true. Social sciences have never been about maths outside of a very non-rigorous movement to convert social sciences into hard sciences.
For example, when I go to the store and they don't have what I want, do you believe there is an equation that I am operating on that instructs me in what to do next? If you truly believe this, then you believe in something akin to a religion - that there is some unknown but discoverable equation all of us make decisions with. If you don't believe this, then you cannot find that equations are how I am making decisions, therefore my decisions on how to allocate my resources are guided by something else, thus, microeconomics cannot be based on the maths.
It is also interesting you state calculus as if it is so hard. I haven't found evidence of this while I have seen people struggle more with advanced algebra than with advanced calculus.
Your statement suggests that Sowell somehow got through Harvard, Columbia, and University of Chicago without taking a "real" economics course, or that those courses were inadequate, or that Sowell is incapable of grasping these more advanced conecpts. These sorts of statements really just make you look like an ass, or worse.
BTW, your first sentence is nonsensical. Things that are theoretical do not "operate" because they are not in the physically existent universe, and economics attempts to explain things exclusively in the physically existent universe.
This is a red herring on the strawman's shoulder. Good. Grief.
I really think you would be much enlightened to listen to Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics audio book. It's really long, but covers this sort of thing just oh so well.
It will help you to answer questions like: how come people in the Soviet Union were starving to death while crops rotted in the field? Among many others...