thinkers like Ludwig von Mises and Hayek create a distinct divide between the social science and the actual science. the social science in economic = at what point do people start paying more for lobster than for cod, when calculating a supply and demand problem. the actual science is when there is a limited supply, the price will increase if the demand stays constant increases, or if there is monetary inflation and the demand stays constant the price will rise consistently if the new money is introduced equally.
there is Economics the Hard science (the Austrian leaning View)
the hard facts in any science are universal and can be leveraged but not manipulated, the same is true in economics
Take the current bitcoin economy, for example (to stay on topic). It has a single fungible "product" that can be moved instantaneously and for free across the globe, without "shelf life", etc.. It should be simple to make an economic theory for it that could predict its price, in the short or long range.
But one runs into problems right at the definition of "supply" and "demand". The number of existing bitcoins is known and objective, but that cannot be considered the "supply" for price fixing purposes because some large holders will not sell (they say) for less than 10 k$/BTC, so it is like if those coins did not exist. To simulate the price in the short run, what matters is the amount of coins that could be sold or bought for prices in the 200$--2000$ range. The order books at the exchanges do not tell us that, because many traders keep their working assets outside the exchanges, and because there may be substantial OTC trading going on.
As for demand, there is some demand for several utilitarian purposes, but we have no data about its magnitude. There is much evidence that it is dwarfed by the speculative demand for investment at various time scales. And we do not have complete data about that either, for the same reasons above.
More importantly, the demand and supply of bitcoin can change drastically and unpredictably in a matter of hours, because they depend on the beliefs that buyers and sellers have about its future -- and those beliefs mat be radically changed by news, regulation, competition, etc..
So, what is the use of a neat and "rigorous" equation that relates price, supply and demand, if one cannot even objectively define -- much less measure and predict -- the future supply and demand?
This is why I think there is a possibility a 3 letter abbreviated agency may have invented Bitcoin, the monetarist have good models but they are ineffective because it is unenlightened self interest that adjust the unit of measure (the currency) , Bitcoin adds only one thing a fixed quantity of supply, this limits only the outer limits as the actual supply is manage by random individuals.