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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

There are so many different reasons prices can change. Changes in availability of natural resources, changes in consumer demand, changes in the means of production, changes in technology.

We know the market is complex and with cyclical components and resonances at various frequencies. We know of the feedback loops caused by expectations driving self-fulfilling prophecies. We know of its fractal and stochastic nature. We know it's almost never a simple cause-and-effect relationship -- rarely is a market participant strong enough to wrestle on even terms with everyone else.

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Individual prices change all the time for a zillion reasons.

The aggregate price level depends on the amount of circulating money. When gas prices go up, we have less to spend on other items, which then fall in price.

Milton Friedman figured this out in the 50s, which led to his Nobel prize.

To be clear, in case I have made myself misunderstood: I agree money supply affects prices.

In fact, whenever someone purchases or sells something, there are two objects being exchanged. One is a currency and the other being the object of sale. Supply and demand for the currency affects the price just as much as supply and demand for the thing being sold.

That's all I'm saying. It's very hard to convincingly put a direction on quantities so tightly intertwined.

I agree that it's a hard problem, but economists figured out most of it 60+ years ago!

I don't mean to pick on you personally, but I don't know any other field where educated people are so happy to believe their hunches over the established science...

"Economists" disagree today, though, regardless of how strong their agreement was 60+ years ago. It seems unfair to the scholarly argument to pretend it's not there.

Saying that economists figured it out is a bit like saying "doctors figured blood-letting out 200 years ago". As true as that may be, we know today whatever it was they figured out is complete garbage.

What am I missing?

If economists disagree about this particular thing, I've missed it.

Which scholars are you referring to?

Putting "Economists" in quotes and comparing them to blood letting doctors doesn't really shake my impression that you don't really respect this field of science :)

Thank you for holding me accountable. The ideas I refer to (as much sense as they make to me) do not, indeed, seem to have much support of mainstream economics. (Contrary to what I thought before you had me look it up.)

I'm still not ready to write them off, in part because of the bias against professional economists you've already caught me exhibiting. But I can admit at this point that it's completely based on personal whim and not much actual substance, as long as the substance is determined by mainstream economics.

Well, if you're going to be reasonable we'll have to stop arguing :)

I'm a "hard science" guy. My degree is in physics and I work writing software. But last 1-2 decades I've found economics to be the most interesting science there is, since it makes me understand society much better than I used to.

> In fact, whenever someone purchases or sells something, there are two objects being exchanged. One is a currency and the other being the object of sale. Supply and demand for the currency affects the price just as much as supply and demand for the thing being sold.

This philosophy of viewing currency itself as subject to supply/demand is literally one of the insights that led to Friedman’s philosophy. For example see the Great Depression where an insufficient supply of money was one of the primary factors.

(See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Great_Depressi...)

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