What do our taxes pay for? Foreign loans? Domestic loans? Roads? Doctors? Let me put it this way: for every shilling that the Government of Kenya collects from me (takes from me), how many of the cents that is collected (taken) spent on something useful? The same can be asked of the Government of Nairobi City County.
The Fourth Schedule to the Constitution is entitled: Distribution of Functions between the National Government and the County Governments. Whatever else these governments do, our taxes go to pay for those forty eight functions. If I were a libertarian, like someone claimed to be on Twitter yesterday in the middle of a long twitter conversation, I would work assiduously to reduce the forty eight functions to a smaller number, perhaps twenty, and with that a shrinkage in the total tax levied upon me by both my governments. I would do so because, as a libertarian, I couldn't abide by the idea that a government could collect money from me in order to build a badly-run, badly-staffed school. Instead, I would tutor my children at home, fill them with the ideas I believed they needed to have.
If I were a libertarian, regardless of the benefits of herd immunity, I would make the decision on whether or no to immunize my children without taking into account the whingeing by the public heath authorities. If this seems like an extremist position for a Kenyan to take, rest assured that it is. There are many "western" ideas that we have adopted, none more so than that of a republican democratic government. It seems that with the liberalisation of the airwaves, there are many new political ideas that have permeated the country and we must debate their purchase, coherence and usefulness. Of these libertarianism offers an opportunity to examine public policy from several perspectives.
Let us use the idea of a light rail system for Nairobi as an example. For it to be built and used, the most important question, obviously, is how it will be paid for. The National Government has pioneered the penchant for foreign loans for large infrastructure projects, pushing up the national debt to unprecedented heights. Can Nairobi afford a light railway? Another obviously important question is whether or not the light railway is a county priority or a white elephant for which every government is guilty. Finally, from a constitutional perspective, especially at Article 201(c) on the inter-generational burden-sharing when it comes to public borrowing.
A libertarian would reject the light rail if it was to be paid for by additional taxes. A libertarian would favour dealing with the structural flaws in the present public transport infrastructure, dominated as it is by privately-owned cars and privately operated public service vehicles. A libertarian would not favour any more borrowing for public infrastructure expansion, such as more pedestrian walkways and bicycle paths. From an inter-generational equity perspective, reducing the debt burden for future generations is admirable, but it is a somewhat unsound reasoning. More of that later.
Without a doubt Nairobi's population is expanding. The current pace of public infrastructure development is discouraging, especially when it comes to the crucial questions of housing and transport infrastructure. Without exact figures I can only speculate but the vast majority of Nairobi's population is poor or lower middle class for whom the largest share of their incomes go to food (including cooking fuel) and shelter; the balance goes to healthcare and transport (primarily public transport). I do not what proportion they represent, but there are vast armies of Nairobians from Kawangware, Kangemi, Kairobangi, Dandora, Kayole, Pipeline, Mathare Valley, Jericho, Kaloleni, Pumwani, Majengo and the various Mukurus, who cannot afford pubic transport, even at ten shillings a trip, who walk vast distances in search of casual employment. These people frequently fall outside the libertarian's calculus, they are an economic anomaly.
About that inter-generational equity, unless we are prepared to accept that Kenya, and Nairobi, will never get richer, a debt burden for future generations need not be debilitating. A future richer Kenya could theoretically pay the debts incurred by the present generations on public infrastructure, like a light rail. Now while many major cities are witnessing a decline in the use of public transport, especially metro rails and light rails, the global trend is towards urbanisation and, consequently, public transport rather than private transport. This should, ideally, temper the no-new-taxes cabal's penchant of obstructionism and foster greater informed debate abut the future of the Nairobi metropolis.
An insufficient appreciation of the rigidities of "western" political ideas, especially over the past decade, informs the paucity of informed political debate in Kenya today, the the difficulties in forging consensus on matters of public importance. However, a fundamental misapprehension of politics has rendered it almost impossible to even open up public debate to non-traditional ideas. It is one thing to declare libertarianism to be ones guiding principle; it is quite another to labour under the delusion that it is the only legitimate way to live.
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