>>There’s a simple way to teach economics. Go back to the days of cave men. Tell them they are free to do anything they want other than stealing from or hurting/killing each other.<<
That is sort of my point. They won’t “recreate economic theory.” What they will do is create an economic model. Economic theory provides tools to defined and describe the model — and to some degree predict the results of the implemented economic model.
But you still need those tools, just as you need mathematical tools to describe relationships. You can’t say something is twice the size of something else without the mathematical toolset of arithmetic and the specific tool of multiplication.
For someone to come along and say “well, I know economics because I spend money and work” is like someone saying “I can tell Item A is twice the size as Item B” without the ability to multiply.
This is merely about knowledge.
Model is what I meant to say, not theory. The theory will evolve as some of the smarter cavemen try to explain what's going on and how they can benefit from the evolving model. In the process they will discover arithmetic, over time arithmetic will lead to algebra, algebra to calculus..