Economics is a complicated field, and I won’t even pretend I am good at it. Multiple factors are at play; you can’t really predict with 100 percent certainty how an economy is going to be in 3 or 10 years, even if you rely on the economic indicators. However, smaller fields of economy like Freakonomics, goon economy, the street cartels, and even pussy cartels keep popping up in uncertain economic times.
So, what is Freakonomics? It is an unconventional part of economics that was popularized by a rogue economist from the university of Chicago called Levitt, who looks at how incentives influence human behaviors.
Freakonomics attempts to adopt economic tools and data analysis to solve everyday topics that traditional economics usually ignore. Assume you want to know whether legalizing abortions leads to a reduction in the crime rate, Freakonomics will answer that. Or maybe you want to know why most street-level drug dealers earn very little. Freakonomics got you covered. If you are thinking whether a real estate agent acts in your best interest when selling a house, freakonomics has an answer…peculiar but very interesting.
Since Kenya has now been officially declared a goon economy. I decided to look at it ‘freakonomically’, it seems the country has gone to the dogs, or so the narrative goes. When South American countries like Colombia, Mexico, or Bolivia lost control of their countries to drug cartels, they were declared narco states.
Whether we have lost control of the nation to goons remains a matter of debate. The goons rose as a result of youth unemployment. The figures stand at 67 percent of the youth aged 18 to 34 being unemployed or underemployed.
That means that if you need to cause chaos and you want 500 young men to help you destabilise the society, and you offer each 500sh, it will be very easy to get a crowd of idle youths to do it for you.
How did we get to be a goon economy? We were a cartel economy, but the cartel doesn’t function alone; it uses goons to operate. The cartel first infiltrated the govt and then the private sector. They are everywhere.
As we all know, cartels determine who gets which contracts. Merit and policies never matter anymore in a goon economy.
So, the goons are everywhere, even youths with jobs and businesses form mini cartels and start using goons to flex their power.
How Deep is the Goon Economy and the Pussy Cartels?
A friend of mine is an accountant in a garbage collection company here in Nairobi, and we got talking about how it works. I told her how I pay sh 200 each month for garbage and how the garbage guys who come to my house to collect garbage money keep changing each year. Then I ask her if I can also start my own garbage collection company since it seems lucrative. She told me not to even try, it is full of cartels. Sigh.
I was not surprised by her response; garbage collection in any city has always been a mafia thing. Traditionally, the cartels love taking control of it because it is very lucrative.
I have two friends who had a problem. One of them is an economics graduate from a local university, and he once overheard that some guy was disrespecting his family in some way. He looked for a bunch of goons to solve the problem for him. I won’t go into the details, but think of it, is it not ironic that an economics graduate resorted to using goons to take care of a problem; he used the ‘goon economy’.
The second friend of mine also had a business to handle and went to a boda boda stage. All he had to say was that ‘whoever wants 500 sh to follow me,’ and he had a bunch of boda guys follow him.
Now, that is how easy it is to get goons or a bunch of hooligans to take care of something for you.
Guys have goons on speed dial just the same way you can have a boda guy or an uber guy on your call log.
If you need someone beaten or even killed, the goons are ready to do your bidding at the right price. With as low as 2k, you can get someone to disappear. This is a very worrying state.
I consider the Kenyan Cartels to be pussy cartels. We don’t see them; they don’t show their faces, they are busy operating in the shadows like a bunch of cowards. If you are a real cartel, why hide? Why don’t you show your face like Vybz Kartel? You are not Vito Corleone, Al Capone, or Lucky Luciano, and other serious mobsters the world has ever seen. They all went down eventually.
These are not real cartels; they can easily be wiped out if the govt is serious about its business. The sugar cartels were stopped, and now the sugar factories in the sugar belt and even Mumias seems to be back to business.
Let me quote Lil Wayne lyrics in a milli
He’s a beast, he’s a dog, he’s a motherf- problem
Okay, you’re a goon, but what’s a goon to a goblin?
Nothin’, nothin’, you ain’t scarin’ nothin’
In other words, a goon is nothing to stronger force or a menace like a government. The biggest gang in any economy is the police. There are many, well-funded, armed, and trained to take action. Look at a city like LA, which has some serious gang culture, with crips and Bloods roaming the streets. Still, the biggest gang in LA is the LAPD. When they decide to solve a major crime, trust me, they do.
So, what is a Real Goon Like?
Based on my street knowledge and rap knowledge, a real goon is one who’s been through the struggle and holds his own and comes out of the struggle. Here’s a small clip by rapper Plies, who popularized the ‘goon’ term, explaining what it means to be a real goon.
About the Freakonomics and pussy cartels
Well, in a failed economy, people are pushed to the wall, and they would do anything to survive; whether sex and affection have been commercialized at such times is usually none of my business. We have only fans, tinder and IG promoting nudity to another level than has ever been at any given time. If the biggest business in Hollywood is show business, the biggest business in the hood might be whore business.
It is still the oldest profession…so why condemn it? If a man got to do what a man got to do. A gal got to do what a gal got to do.
Pour Conclure
There are many things and causes the youths can engage in apart from being goons or seen as goons. They can go and farm vegetables and maize in the villages instead of causing havoc on our streets. They can pick up errands to run instead of lazing around.
However, if everything fails and they resort to hooliganism, they can at least be real goons. The working guy is the tough guy. The street thugs acting tough are not really tough. Because the goon economy is not a real economy, it is not productive at all. Tell me any country that has benefited from the goon economy? Haiti is run by goons. We can see youths walking in their streets with AKs; that country is a total mess.
That is the last thing we want for Nairobi and Kenya. We are slowly turning into a ghetto. We are already third world, so let’s work towards better solutions to our political situations and economic situations, as opposed to using goons.
We need to employ enough police in our country to contain this tough situation. This is important as we start the campaigns for the next year’s elections. We don’t need to lose the country to goons.
To the real goons!
Slade.
