I don't understand the classical liberalism part. How do a bunch of empires, that don't operate on market principles, going to war with each other show that classical liberalism is a 'colossal failure'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_General_Theory_of_Employme...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_business_cycle_theory
Cf. for example Hayek’s critique of the classical liberal notion of the perfectly informed, rational market actor.
The core tenent is that the free market is the best allocator of factors of production and entrepreneurial profit is the guiding factor. The state tends to interfere with this. It's best summarized in the socialist calculation debate.
However, there's also basically a split (mostly reconciled these days) betwen a more Hayekian wing which is more accepting of the mainstream (and could possibly self-identify as neoliberals) and the state in general and a wing that is more in the spirit of von Mises.
Disclaimer: just interested in the history of economics, not an economist.
Murray Rothbard wrote an entire profile on the man [0] and I'd suggest anybody taking a stab at heterodox economics to read it.
Man if there was ever a pot for a kettle...
I would say, I'd bet nobody having an argument about economics here has actually read much Keynes, or anything about classical/neo-liberalism. It all just turns into "I recognize some word related to the right, so I'll virtue signal and keep hyping it." Or more, "I see a free market economy argument happening, I must jump in and comment because markets are from God and I must support".
So I am simultaneously shy of saying "Kaynes was wrong" and confident that anyone claiming "Kaynes was right and we must do suchandsuch!" is saying the wrong thing. Ditto the other theories.
That'd be equivalent to grow America's M2 ($20 trillion) by 12 trillion in just 4 years. 2019 to 2022 wasn't even that intense and, well, we can see how ugly things have gotten.
I’m not an economist so I’m speaking from a position of ignorance here. But I thought the US was on gold standard during this time period.
How was the Fed able to increase money supply by such a large % without e.g. the country mining a lot more gold?
I tried a cursory search but was unable to find any answers.
The only way to stop politicians meddling with money is to denationalize it and eliminate legal tender laws.
the ruthless capitalist approach led to the development of communism as a reaction. but communism had its own faults and, to many, egregious failures as well.
Mussolini -- who was literally the editor of a socialist newspaper -- grew disillusioned with socialism, and proposed a 3rd way by mixing chunks of capitalism that he liked with the chunks of communism that he liked, as well as a good healthy dose of machismo and nationalism to paper over the gaps.
similar approaches were taken in Germany, and there was a Nationalist (right wing) Workers Party (left wing) called the NSDAP that tried to do the same thing. Instead of pure corporatism they made it ethnic, but had vaguely similar approaches to corporations and the state, which often meant whatever they felt like at the time.