Chris Coyne on Manufacturing Militarism - Deep Dive

Chris Coyne is an economics professor at George Mason University and the author of several books on militarism in the U.S. and abroad. In this episode of The Great Antidote, he talks with host Juliette Sellgren about his past research and his new book, Manufacturing Militarism: U.S. Government Propaganda in the War on Terror (co-authored with Abby Hall). 

One of Coyne’s inspirations for his most recent book was the revelations by Edward Snowden about the U.S. Surveillance state. The activities Snowden exposed violated the fundamental rights and liberties of members of the US population and foreign citizens. Because of the secrecy surrounding these and other activities, Americans can’t be confident that their liberties are secure even now because of how clearly they have been unprotected in the past.  Coyne and Sellgren discuss one of the fundamental challenges in constitutional political economy: How do you (can you?) empower but also constrain? War-making and national security policy pose the gravest threat because they are so high-centralized and they control massive amounts of information and extremely dangerous weapons. While the presumption by many people is that most of the time these are used for good, they can be threats to freedom and market dynamism. The part of the discussion focused Coyne and Hall's new book begins at 18:41. 

Coyne argues that the state apparatus is a potential threat to the well-being, freedom, and liberty of the individuals that live under that state, in addition to those that live outside that state but are still subject to its influence. He hopes to both raise awareness of these problems but also shift the emphasis in how people think about domestic relationships, foreign relationships, and the role of the national security apparatus. 

The default assumption shouldn’t be that militarization does good and generate (classical) liberal outcomes; The default assumption should be that it creates illiberal outcomes and should only be used rarely. That requires a citizenry that cares about this issue because change won’t come from anywhere else, the incentives are too misaligned. 

Coyne also discusses what economists, in particular, can bring to discussions of propaganda and national security public policy: A understanding of asymmetric information problems as well as Political Economy and Public Choice economic frameworks to understand how knowledge issues and incentives play out in policy making. 

You'll also find out, as always, the one thing Coyne thinks young people today should know and something he's changed his mind about. 

The Great Antidote: Chris Coyne on Manufacturing Militarism | Adam Smith Works

The guest: Chris Coyne

Resources compiled by Christy Lynn