Public Exchange on Economic Policy: The Right to Pretend

It is extremely difficult at the very best, otherwise impossible, to have logical discourse on economic policy matters in the Kenyan media. Why is that the case? Simply because expert opinion has been crowded out by the posturing that we see on display everyday (Oh, and nobody for instance tries to correct the fast-talking TV business newscasters who on a daily basis confuse the money market with the foreign exchange market! "And now the money market report. Today the Kenya shilling was trading at X shillings per US$, bla bla bla..". If you think I am joking, try to endure the business news tonight).
Admittedly, when it comes to strong opinions in the media, economics and economic policy prescriptions are ahead of views meant to help people loose weight or "projections" on which team is going to win an English Premiership football match and by how many goals.
Take the case of Mitiga Murithi's argument in a recent commentary. It's Murithi's considered view that for us to attain the "miracle" status that East Asian economies, our countries must be led by regimes that are close to dictatorship. That way, their benevolence will lead to fast growth.
And how was the "miracle" manifested? Of course in fast growth, arising more from heavy government investment - not household or firm. That is the trap that the World Bank fell into when in a report published in in 1993 - The East Asian Miracle: Economic Growth and Public Policy - it celebrated victory too soon. Only four years later, when the "miracle" culminated in the Asian financial crisis, did those who looked at the whole episode from the lessons of elementary economics and concluded that the growth was ordinary-garden-variety (if you invest more, then you grow more! But that may not be sustainable unless that growth is associated with productivity growth) almost chanted that: 'we told you so'! But that is retrospect.
It is no wonder that some people in positions of responsibility - legislators especially - feign a lack of appreciation of detail in the current controversy surrounding the standard gauge railway and its costing and retort that they only care about the end product regardless of how much it 'costs'. Such attitude can only make sense if one has never heard of the phrase Economic Rate of Return; for if we invest in the railway at any cost, it will result in high growth during the investment period, but because the viability is compromised it will compromise other areas of economic management - e.g. our debt sustainability, given that the investment is debt financed.
Do we expect our economic pundits and their pseudo-pundit cousins to  put a spotlight on the economics of such investments? Well, I almost give up on them. Such intellectual engagement competes for space and airtime with posturing - the right to pretend and be heard pretending.
The end result is that interesting and deep public exchange on economic policy is rare, if at all. And  in the recent past the best we have had, in my view, is the exchange between David Ndii and Nyaga Munyi.But such exchange often ignored or even misunderstood by those card carrying pretenders to expertise.