I like this brief essay because it supports my belief that no such thing as “supply and demand” exists.
The writer notes that consumers and producers don’t experience supply and demand directly. Instead they experience prices — which, in the event, are givens.
The producer of a good may set the price, but consumers decide whether to pay it or not. As a result, neither party is in full control of the outcome (for himself) of any specific transaction. This means in turn that the price of goods is separable from their cost of production.
Ultimately, the prices we see in the marketplace are just the prices previous buyers were willing to pay, or else they are prices that producers are testing to determine their sustainability. Simple as that.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
It seems to me to be a distinction without a difference.
Vibrations traveling through the air are interpreted as sound and not as vibrations you could visualize on an oscilloscope. Price signals are how we detect supply and demand balance or imbalance.
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RE: “Price signals are how we detect supply and demand balance or imbalance.”
That makes sense. I think the point of the essay is to show that supply-and-demand theory does not provide a good explanation of where prices come from.
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