Talking of small government, here is a legendary example of the difference between Capitalism and State Socialism. The latter in this case ably represented by a Conservative Government in London.

Back in 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated there were fears that millions of Russians would starve to death. We had to help. But how?

One typically stupid answer was to help us, rather than help them. So huge piles of surplus EU butter created by the CAP were sent to Russia. This of course nipped in the bud whatever local incentives might be emerging for Russians to make their own butter in non-communist quantities. But hey, it was helping feed hungry Russians, right?

Having quickly unloaded some EU surpluses in this way, HMG and other EU governments started to ponder the strategic question: how to transform Russian agriculture after some seven decades of communism?

The old development cliche was trundled out. "Confucius say: better to teach a starving man how to fish, rather than give him spare fish – that way he can learn to feed himself!" (Note: there are other versions.)

Thus emerged the idea of the Model Farm. HMG would work with private sector experts to set up a model farm in Russia. Russians would flock to it to see how to do things properly.

The Know How Fund set about this task with vigour. A team of senior British agro-industrialists was assembled and given a high-profile send-off by PM John Major. A suitable plot was identified near ostensibly reform-minded St Petersburg. More junior experts then started to get on with the details.

The project slowly slipped from prominence. Meanwhile the free market aka Scientific Capitalism in a few months did what seven decades of Scientific Communism had totally failed to do, namely get markets moving and food into Russian shops.

I was posted to Moscow in mid-93. It seemed that the Model Farm project was, er, getting stuck. Squabbles over land boundaries. Or something.

Moscow had not had fresh milk in any quantities since the Revolution. Behold, it started to come into supermarkets in 1995. Why?

In part because of McDonald’s.

The then biggest McDonald’s hamburger outlet in the world had opened not far from Red Square. Russians queued en masse to sample the food – and the glamour. But to run an operation on this scale required milk shakes and meat, ie cows. And importing meat/milk to meet Russia’s surging demand was not sustainable.

So McDonald’s set up their own farm in Russia. And it worked.

Thus a magnificent case study in failure of development assistance.

On the one hand, an intelligent well-designed and expensive socialist model farm which never produced a single sausage as far as I know. Launched with such a fanfare it quietly crawled away to die in a KHF cupboard. I still wonder what it all cost.

And on the other a real-life farm, complete with cows, set up and run by the much-derided McDonald’s.

To quote Devo:

all we ask is that you let us
serve it your way…

… too much paranoias
think i got a rupto-pac
think i got a big mac attack