This statement by James Galbraith makes my head spin a bit.

Just as Einstein had erased Euclid’s axiom of parallels, Keynes’s General Theory had long since obliterated the supply curves for labor and saving, thereby eliminating the supposed markets for labor and capital.

It followed that the prices of production were set by costs (mostly labor costs and interest rates), while quantities were determined by effective demand. Markets were not treated as if they were magical. It was obvious that most resources and components did not move under the influence of an invisible hand. Rather, they moved according to contracts between companies on terms set by negotiation, as had been the case for more than a hundred years. Technology was managed by organizations – mostly by large corporations – in what was sometimes called “the new industrial state.”

Project Syndicate

This is in a review of a book arguing that prices are really important. It’s a bit disturbing to me to think that there might not be a consensus among economists about how the economy actually works. We ordinary people can grasp theories like prices equilibrating supply and demand, and even how interest rates are related to the money supply and inflation, if we try really hard. But we assume the experts understand this stuff on a much deeper level, and that it is fundamentally science. If our understanding of civilization turns out to be based on pseudoscience, we might be in trouble.