1. What was the toaster project? What Thomas Thwaites attempt to do? Was he successful and what is the significant of this example in the context of complexity and development?

   • The toaster project was when Thomas Thwaites tried to build a toaster from scratch using raw materials. It took him a long time to create the toaster, and he struggled to obtain all of the items to build it. It was successful but only for a few seconds and then it turned to flame. He showed that even the most simple and cheapest looking items are very complex and made from lots of parts. His experiment proved the efficiency of the economy in the way that it is able to mass produce items and has a system planned so that everything runs smoothly.

2. According to Barder, how successful have economic models been at describing and predicting growth over the past 50 years?  How did he use the Harrod-Domar model, the Solow model, the Washington consensus and the Ajoakuta Steel works to illustrate his point (reference at least two of the above).

   • Economic models have not been helpful in describing and predicting growth. They have trouble explaining why some countries are able to experience a drastic increase of economic growth, while other countries do not. Some also seem to blame how everyone before them was wrong and that there is a missing ingredient that would make things right. The Harrod-Domar growth model was a simple model that stated to get an output, capital and labor needed to occur. For example, to increase its output, a firm would need to increase its use of labor and capital. On the bigger scale, the economy is made up of these firms, so to increase the production of the economy, their needs to be more labor or more capital. This model had trouble explaining why South Korea grew so fast and Ghana did not. The Solow model was an extension of the Harrod-Domar model saying that there was a third part to it, “technical change.” It is the missing ingredient, that with labor and capital, the three increase the output of firms. This model fit the data better, but it wasn’t really a model but rather a breakdown of growth into labor, capital, and some unexplained category.

3. Who was Steve Jones? What did he do at uni-lever? Was he successful?  Specifically what did he do in order to make an evolutionary jump forward?  How significant were his results?

   • Steve Jones used to work in a factory making soap powder, and he was hired by Unilever to design a more efficient nozzle to spray the soap. He took the existing nozzle and made ten copies of it. He then altered each of the copies and determined which worked the best. Then he took that model, made 10 copies, distorted them, and so on for forty-five times. To make the evolutionary jump forward, he used data and randomized it to find the best shape which no one could have come up with otherwise. His new nozzle was hundreds of times more efficient than the original one.

4. Who was Haile Sellasie?  What is the significance of Kapuscinski’s book, The Emporer?  According to Barder, how did Ethiopia exemplify the suppression of emergent systemic change?  How do you think Sen would have described this suppression? Do you agree?

   • Haile Sellasie was the Emperor of Ethiopia, the last of the dynasty. The Emperor, the book, showed the top-down model in action and the way that these regimes only cared for their own preservation and keeping their power as opposed to putting their energy towards developing the economic and social aspects of their country. Ethiopia was suppressed because of the internal logic of the regimes. They suppressed any efforts from the population towards inclusive political and social institutions which could threaten their position. Ethiopia has been stuck in a poverty trap by the elites who benefitted from the unequal economic and social institutions. Sen would call this an unfreedom, and I agree, because the population is not given economic, social, or political rights due to the control of the high elites. The people are not being given the same opportunities to make their lives better because they have no control.