• The negative effects of subsidies—especially, the benefits never produced because of the losses to taxation—are invisible and hence can only be understood by those who are willing to break out of concrete-bound thinking. People see the spin-offs of the space program, but none of the spin-offs from the other businesses and research programs (perhaps including even private explorations of space) that were never permitted to come into being.

• Taxpayers are easily confused as to their true interests by the misleading arguments presented by advocates of subsidies, including in particular the Fallacy of Political Reductionism, by which they impugn the ethical motives of subsidy opponents. This fallacy will be analyzed in the final subsection of Section 3.

• For reasons to be explored further in Section 5, political support for a subsidy is easier to mobilize than is opposition to it, particular after the subsidy recipients have begun to acquire funding and can therefore better afford to pay lobbyists. Consequently, lobbying organizations in Washington and other capitals are overwhelmingly pro-subsidy, with but a few honorable exceptions, such as the Cato Institute and the National Taxpayers Union.     

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