Butter Chicken delivered by Adam Smith's 'invisible hand'

As I was munching through a delicious butter chicken the other day marveling at the different flavours, the wonderful aroma and the eye pleasing richness of its colour it occurred to me that if you were born and lived your life in a Marxist state then you would never know what this wonderful dish tasted like.

It's ironic that someone born in Cuba - and by 'someone' I mean your average Joe and not a high party official that travels the world - could live their whole life and never know of the existence, let alone the taste, of butter chicken but a cigar aficianado in Mumbai will most likely know the flavour of a Cuban cigar.


In any state in which the government tells the citizenry what they can and cannot do, and the Marxist kind is the purest example, there is simply no driver that could ever lead to such exotic additions to the culinary landscape. The 'need' in 'to each according to their need' does not include butter chicken. How could it?


During both World Wars, as well as the Depression, rationing and food shortages led to long lines outside the local butcher or grocer. In free economies these events are rare and the fact they happened has led to much historical analysis and commentary in order to be able to avoid them again.


But in countries in which the state controls all aspects of people's lives these queues are normative. During my time in the Soviet Union I used to marvel at the length of the lines for such basics as bread, milk and meat, even in well below zero temperatures. It left an indelible impression on me and is one of the reasons that I was anti the left early in my life. In free societies queues are normally the result of the release of a new Apple product or of tickets to see the world's hottest bands.


This insular thinking leads to a xenophobic result, whether planned or otherwise, in which anything from the outside - including people, their ideas and their culture - are shut out. If you're drawing up 5 or 10 year plans then one of those things that never seems to make the list is:

[101] b) iii) Allow immigration of 500,000 Indians so that we can not only take advantage of their ideas but also go to Indian restaurants to eat yummy butter chicken.

That's assuming that you could find any Indians who wanted to emigrate, as well as anyone who could afford to pay for a restaurant meal.


Thus, the net result of planned, Marxist states is a decaying and calcifying of life due to the inhibition of new ideas from outside, free thought and individual liberty.


Free trade, underpinned by Adam Smith's 'invisible hand', has made available to consumers all around the world a vast array of quality of life improving products and services that they could otherwise never have had access to, assuming they knew they existed.


One of them is butter chicken.