The laws of supply and demand apply to everything, period. But they can only be predicative if you know the correct numbers. And because they do apply to everyt

The laws of supply and demand apply to everything, period. But they can only be predicative if you know the correct numbers. And because they do apply to everything, perfect accuracy and precision would require measurements that we don't know how to make or could make, as well as measurements for stuff we don't even know about. In applied economics people necessarily make simplifications, like assuming nominal prices in currency accurately reflect the various considerations consumers and producers have in mind. Suffice it to say, even tiny errors can easily and quickly produce bogus assessments and predictions. The proper criticism to basic economic laws isn't that they don't control, it's that we systematically underestimate (another measurement error!) our capability of applying them well, both ex post as well as and especially a priori. The same problem exists in all fields, it's just that many problems are relatively more tractable; solutions may not diverge as quickly, are more tolerant of inaccuracy and imprecision, generally producing more useful results. But at some point your numbers are sufficiently off that your predictions and models produce results widely at odds with reality. Such as all the various crazy and contradictory hypotheses regarding cosmological phenomena; hypotheses which turn on tiny uncertainties regarding various parameters. But in economics there are fewer constants and a heck of a lot more free variables for even simple predictions. It's quite literally intractable. That's why people often conceptualize "the market" as a giant calculator. We know the basic principles to the calculator, but at scale nobody can arrive at the solution faster than the giant calculator itself. Anyone telling you they can do so is necessarily lying to you. But in general the only people telling you that are politicians, pundits, and other people with an agenda, though sadly too many of them are also economists.