I don't know economic theories from Adam's off-ox.
I do know a bit of history, which includes economic policies and practices of previous cultures.
The pre-pharonic Egyptian warlord who created the first unified Egyptian kingdom practiced socialism: all food and all manufactured goods were collected into his personal control and distributed according to his perception of the relative value of various segments of the population subject to his power, his personal judgment concerning every person's relative "value to the State" -- his warriors, his priests, his government administrators got the lion's share -- those who actually produced the food and goods got the least -- and slavery was the primary source of the physical energy required to produce both. Further, this economic practice DID NOT STOP wars: it FUNDED his wars of conquest. He was the first, the predecessor to Stalin and Castro and Chavez. Labor forced from top-down control of the economy and labor/production supply DOES NOT STOP WARS AND DOES NOT STOP class inequality in terms of material possessions: those in power have the most, those who actually do the work still have less than those in power. We've seen this exact same result of socialism in the Soviet Union, in Cuba, in China, and now in Venezuela and in the United States: those in political power get rich and live in luxury, those who labor to produce the wealth have less and live in ever declining conditions -- because those in power take too much of the resources of the working class and spend it on things which do not directly improve living conditions for the working class.
Anyone want to argue that Ukrainian farmers actually lived better under socialism than they did under Nicolas II? Anyone want to argue that Cuban working slobs live better under Castro than they did under the Spanish monarchial system? Anyone want to argue that the lives of Chinese working class slobs were more comfortable, happier, more prosperous under Mao than under the Emperors? Anyone want to argue that ECONOMIC PROSPERITY for the Venezuelan lower classes is actually rising under Chavez's control? Under socialist governments, those in control of the government determine distribution of wealth BASED ON THEIR OWN VALUATION of class contributions to producing that wealth -- and ALWAYS think they themselves deserve more because they achieve more and are more necessary to the good of the State than those who actually earn the goodies by working their butts off.
The Roman Empire, beginning with Augustus Caesar, used government grain doles to buy vote from the lower classes -- this is how Octavius became Imperator in the first place -- and kept on being elected Imperator for decades -- until what had been a time-limited and very narrowly defined and restricted and limited authority became absolute and unlimited power to do whatever the hell he ALONE thought "good" -- and, again, the people in control of the government lived in luxury -- those without jobs, uneducated and untaught, lacking any job skills, lived in near-starvation off the government dole -- and the working class, those in the middle, especially merchants, bore more and more and more of the cost of living for BOTH sets, those in political power and those who had no power even over their own living conditions.
In time, the Roman government actually, by law, forced merchants to donate more than 6 months out of the year to earning the means to keep the unemployed from rioting and burning down the palaces of those in POLITICAL power -- not commercial and manufacturing classes who actually produced the wealth -- those pretty much operated outside Rome itself. Eventually, they tried to force occupations onto citizens: a man whose father had been a carpenter was forced to be a carpenter -- because blue collar workers STOPPED WORKING -- they actually could live better off the government dole than they could by earning their own basic life needs.
As MILITARY DEFENSE of outlying areas declined, violence and destruction along the borders increased until even the outlying border areas of Italy itself came under the same outside attacks, because of two factors, 1) the politicization of the military/police forces and 2) there wasn't enough in the federal treasury, which had teetered on bankruptcy because of excess borrowing to pay for "social programs."
Then, local leaders started using part of their own resources to hire and equip and supply their own private militia defense forces; independent farmers and carpenters and metal workers (blue collar labor) began to appeal for protection -- and the feudal system was born: legal ownership of the land passed to the warlord, but the worker AND HIS DESCENDANTS had usafruit of it for all future time, so long as they also supplied a set amount of labor for the warlord's personal needs -- it started off as 1/7th -- one day's labor on stuff like road building, 5 days on communal farming projects (farms no longer existed -- each farmer had a strip of land as long as an ox team could plow in a single dawn to dark day -- and somebody else had the strip next to his -- they worked all the strips together and divided the produce according to how many strips each family had been guaranteed -- the lord had 1 out of every 7 strips, 1 out of every 7 piglets or lambs born, while each "serf" had 1 out of the entire herd of swine or flock of sheep, grazing being common and herd management being common shared duty) -- in addition, the warlord had specific reserves for himself alone, all hunting rights being reserved, all timber rights, etc., from which income and food supplies he was expected to support the metal workers who kept his swords and shields and plows etc. in good order and his warriors fed and in physical condition for actually fighting bandits. It was a remarkably stable economic system -- except for one thing: there was little to no Upward Mobility, few ways that individuals could break out of their father's social rank and economic activities to satisfy personal ambitions and creativity, pursue personal ingenuity which is the source of technological innovations without warlord approval first.
Magna Carta is actually an attempt to stop the reassertion of Divine Right of Kings by legally and militarily destroying the old feudal warlordism -- and John I (think early 1100s -- some 800 years after the formal official end of the Western Roman Empire, some 300 years before the final destruction of the Eastern half by islamic imperialism) got his clock cleaned -- it was NOT innovative and "progressive" or "liberal" -- and it was NOT "conservative" and "traditional" at all. It was two ALWAYS existing socio-political systems in rivalry since time immemorial clashing, with warlordism coming out on top -- local SMALL government more entrenched in England -- while Big Government (advocated by Charlesmagne and the source of the Holy Roman Empire) replaced warlordism on the continent, particularly in France and Spain.
With the beginning of the surge in technological innovations -- especially in the wool industry (Chaucer's Wife of Bath -- c, 14th century -- was based on a real economic phenomenon; the women of Bath LED a cottage industry that took dominance in the wool/fabric trade away from Flanders -- until the merchant's guild took it away from the women; similar changes were happening in the chandler's trade, metal-working, ag technologies, and, mostly, in transportation related and military industrial and construction areas -- with a huge economic gain for commercial trade directly boosted by the Crusades) -- with these technologies and expanded commercial trade demands came a greater demand for pasture land and the Enclosure movement made the feudal system obsolete -- expanding commercial and industrial potentials challenged ag as the primary economic activity. This Enclosure Movement in England created a massive unemployment crisis by the time of Elizabeth I -- and mercantilism was born. Mercantilism is colonialism for the economic gain of the Home Country under the control of the government. The Hanseatic League was a glowing example of mercanilism at its most successful.
Free trade DID NOT EXIST At ALL until the 18th and 19th centuries, when it was created by break-away New England commercial interests -- based on the superior technology of the Yankee clipper ship and the New England fishing trade and the New England manufacturing trade, centered on the textile industry. In many ways, it was the spinning jenny, the steam engine, and the cotton gin that made slavery and human sweat labor in producing raw materials and food supplies obsolete -- and that was already well underway BEFORE 1776. By 1800, the home-based production system was already being challenged by factories elsewhere, so independent production (the Village Blacksmith is the usual exemplary lamented "old way") and self-sufficiency and self-employment are beginning to obsolesce.
Now, think about WHY the American colonies were settled vs. why Spain conquered it's own territories in the Americas -- and at the same time, thing about the difference between America's Manifest Destiny expansionism and Spanish/French and BRITISH expansionism during the 1800s. Both were driven by economic THEORY and economic demands -- but they were radically different in methodology and in focused purpose. And both are directly related to the question of socialism vs. free trade vs. mercantilism vs. protectionism.
Then, after discussing those distinct historical ACTUAL APPLICATIONS of economic theories, let's talk about what happened when Woodrow Wilson, the Father of Progressive-ism, "came to the throne" so to speak -- and how the US AND EUROPE BOTH crashed in the time between 1918 and 1929.
