1.0 Introduction
Where do prices come from in mainstream economics? As far as I know, some hard questions were raised half a century ago.
They still have not been answered, I gather.
2.0 No Agent Makes Prices
Consider competitive markets, as defined in marginalist economics for most of the twentieth century.
This implies that agents in the market take prices as given.
From Steve Keen, I know that if only a countable infinity of consumers and firms exist, the agents are
systematically mistaken. Despite their beliefs, they are not atomic, and their actions in varying quantities
bought or sold affect prices.
For agents not to be systematically mistaken,
an uncountable infinity of consumers and firms must
exist.
I have noted Emmanuelle Benicourt
making similar
points before.