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Comment by somewhat_drunk | Hacker News Reader

I'd wager they aren't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_controls

If you actually read the rest of my comment, I acknowledge mainstream (that is to say, neoclassical) economists don't like price controls, which is almost exactly what the wiki page says.

I did read your comment, and I blithely responded with another source supporting my original claim. In hindsight though, you're right: I should have simply picked apart your original argument instead of providing another source, as your argument is self-contradictory.

You argued that econlib cherry-picked economists to generate a biased result, which you then followed up by acknowledging that "mainstream" economists do not support price controls, which is exactly what the survey showed.

There is, in fact, a broad consensus among economists that price controls are generally counterproductive. The econlib survey showed it, the wikipedia links support that, and you apparently agree. So... thanks?

I think it goes without saying that if you don't include any voices of dissent, you get a remarkably consistent answer. That is still a bias.

I don't think you understand what bias is in this context.

To illustrate this, consider the following hypothetical survey.

Survey:

"Is murdering babies wrong"?

End Survey

Essentially everyone will respond with a strong yes.

By your logic, if I don't include a dissenting opinion, the poll is necessarily biased.

Of course that's not correct.

The purpose of a poll is to understand the opinions of a population by understanding the opinions of a randomly selected sample of the population. If the population has strong opinions on a given topic, the survey will return lopsided results. That does not make the survey biased.

If however you seek out people with opinions to the contrary for the sake of including unpopular opinions, THAT DOES bias the survey, because the survey sample is then no longer randomly selected.

I don't think you understand how diverse different schools of thought are in economics. To build on your example, it would be like asking "is abortion wrong?" to a group of religious fundamentalists. Ask a post-Keynesian what they think about price controls, or really, any school that's not a free market fundamentalist.

I don't think you understand how surveys work. The goal of a survey isn't to include everyone's opinion. The goal of a survey is to understand the overall opinion of the population. This is not difficult to understand, I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse to avoid having to admit you're wrong.

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