Informal Truncated Lightning Round Questions
Answer to Question 1: In the toaster project Thomas Thwaites attempted to make a build a basic six dollar toaster from scratch. With so nearly 400 parts made of various materials, it was difficult for Thwaites to replicate the toaster from scratch. However, after some accomodations and 9 months of hard work, he managed to do so. The toaster lasted for 5 seconds and he deemed it a partial success. This experiment is significant to the topic of complexity and development because in the same way building a cheap toaster requires many parts and a sophisticated economy with the ability to produce those parts, economic development does not occur with one change, but is a sophistacted process that only occcurs when systems within society work to produce that change.
Answer to Question 2: Overall speaking, economic models have been extremely unsuccessful in describing growth patterns in society because these models treat economic growth as a linear and simple process rather than what they really are- non-linear and complex processes. Take for example the Harrod-Dommar growth model which states to make a unit of output, a certain amount of capital and labor is necessary. This model confined economic growth to 2 chararacteristics (capital and labor) and failed to take into account other factors that influence economic growth, including politics, policy and others. Additionally, this model viewed economic growth as the process of increasing output which doesn’t nceccesarily improve people’s capability to live healthy lives as true economic growth does. The Neoclassical growth model built upon the Harrod-Dommar growth model, adding a 3rd characteristic: “Exogenous” technical change . The problem with this model was that it not only failed to define what this technical change was, but it wasn’t even a model. It was simply a form of accounting that breaks growth into increases of labor, capital, and some ambigious component equal to technical change. Once again, this “model” sought to simplify economic growth even though it is a more sophisticated process.
Answer to Question 3: Steve jones was a evolutionary biologist who developed an extremely efficient soap powder nozzle using a unique method. He took the unefficent nozzle, made ten copies, and tested to see which one was the most efficient among them. He then made ten copies of the most efficient one he tested. After continuing this process for 45 generations, he formed a nozzle that was way more efficient than the one they started with. Overall speaking, he developed a method that allowed products to improve its efficiency by a hundredfold. His results demonstrate adaptive change- change that brings about game-changing jumps to new solutions.
In The “Emporer”, Kapuscinski detailed the life and rule of Haille Sellasie, the last ruler Ethopia under the feudal system. According to Barder, the Ethopians exemplfied the suppression of systematic change by forcefully extracting economic value from their population, suppressing any efforts to move toward a more inclusive society which might threaten the position of the elite. Under tyranny, Sellasie controlled every aspect of society, treating his people as puppets, promoting and demoting as he wished. Sen would have detested this form of oppression, seeing this as an obstacle in economic growth. As an advocate for freedom, he believed that economic growth and development ensued when basic freedoms were expanded to allow people to make choices to better their lives and not suppressed as what happened under Sellasie’s rule. I completely agree with Sen’s viewpoint because without having political, social, and economic freedom, people can’t make basic choices that will help maximize their enjoyment.