Commonplace: B.S. Asymmetry Principle

But, it may be asked, are the benefits of freedom so well hidden that they are evident only to professional economists?

Yes, we must admit that our opponents in this argument have a marked advantage over us. They need only a few words to set forth a half-truth; whereas, in order to show that it is a half-truth, we have to resort to long and arid dissertations.

This situation is due to the nature of things. Protection concentrates at a single point the good that it does, while the harm that it inflicts is diffused over a wide area. The good is apparent to the outer eye; the harm reveals itself only to the inner eye of the mind. In the case of free trade, it is just the reverse.

The same is true of almost all economic questions.

You may say, "Here is a machine that has put thirty workmen out on the street."

Or, "Here is a spendthrift whose behavior encourages every branch of industry."

Or, again, "The conquest of Algiers has doubled the trade of Marseilles."

Or, finally, "Government expenditures provide a living for a hundred thousand families."

Everyone will understand you, for your propositions are lucid, simple, and self-evident. You may go further, and deduce the following principles from them:

Machinery is an evil.

Extravagance, conquests, and heavy taxes are all good.

And your theory will be all the more widely accepted because you will be able to support it with undeniable facts.

But, for our part, we cannot limit ourselves to the consideration of a single cause and its immediate effect. We know that this effect itself becomes in its turn a cause. In order to pass judgment on a measure, we must, then, trace it through the whole chain of its effects to its final result. In other words, we are reduced, quite frankly, to an appeal to reason.

But at once we find ourselves assailed by the familiar clamor:

You are theorists, metaphysicians, ideologists, Utopians, and doctrinaires; and all the prejudices of the public are roused against us.

Frédéric Bastiat, Economic Sophisms (Foundation for Economic Education, 1968), 4-5.