Subtlety != non-magical. Confusing subtlety and depth with rigorous thinking -- or even worse, scientific thinking -- is a common confusion people fall into when engaging with economic theory. Both professionally and as a side interest, both on the left and on the right.

Existence of a large literature base, a big set of jargon, logically rigorous arguments, and mathematical models and theorems does not preclude fundamentally magical thinking.

If you disagree, go read some Christian Apologetics. Portions of the field are more rigorous and have far more subtlety than most economics. But sorry, it's still fundamentally rooted in (literally) magical thinking.

> priest-kings... alt-priests

So we've replaced magical thinking with jargon-y name calling. Progress...?