Last updated on January 12, 2011
Milton Friedman once said that no one in the world knew how to make a pencil from scratch. He said that in order to illustrate the power of the market at decentralizing the hundreds if not thousands of tasks necessary to make something as simple as a pencil.
Designer Thomas Thwaites decided to build a toaster from scratch, learning the lesson of the pencil the hard way. Here is his TED talk on the topic:
(H/T: Chris Blattman via Twitter.)