Fraud implies intent.. I think this is just a case of horrendous negligence.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
How do you accidentally claim to own someone else's copyright? What evidence of ownership do they have that leads them to force MySpace to prevent this guy from offering his own music to his fans?
It doesn't prevent them from revealing knowledge of a lie. It just prevents them from attaching their name to the revelations to some degree. As I said, they can always forward the information to the FCC or another news source anonymously. Of course the FCC will go after the broadcast license of the station which could result in losing their jobs anyways.
But here is a question. If you worked for a news station that purposely lied, would you want to remain working for them and have your professional reputation soiled by their misdeeds? I mean seriously, your professional reputation could go from Lead report for a the county's largest broadcaster to the guy who told all those lies on TV.
That's what I mean about it being a screwed up ruling. Ensuring that they have to come forward with information anonymously and hope that the station doesn't figure out where the leak is rather than giving them the protection they should have is just plain screwed up. I don't understand what justification there could be for not protecting them.
It's not a screwed up ruling. It simply states that the person's claim wasn't valid. Preemptive strike or not, there was a clause in their contract that allowed it to be severed without cause. It wasn't until after that, they threatened to tell the FCC and claim protection. Furthermore, their actions stopped the report from airing at all. Anyways, it didn't prevent anyone from filing a complaint against any news agency for fake or misleading news nor does it give anyone a license to lie.
As I said, it doesn't prevent people from spotting lies and filing complaints. What it does do is prevent employees from revealing knowledge of the lies as they would be quickly fired with no legal recourse. Just pointing out a lie is not really going to make much difference. Being able to show that the station lied knowingly is the hard part.
In September 1997, [2dca.org] WTVT notified Akre and Wilson that it was exercising its option to terminate their employment contracts without cause. Akre and Wilson responded in writing to WTVT threatening to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") alleging that the station had "illegally" edited the still unfinished BGH report in violation of an FCC policy against federally licensed broadcasters deliberately distorting the news.
I can only hope it was changed, because that's one seriously screwed up ruling. I'm sure there's more to the story than the station just firing them without cause. That sounds more like a preemptive strike.
Have you ever once even *tried* to talk to the people in your congressional office?
If you believe in this, then go fight for it. Take fifteen minutes out of your day and write an email or pick up the phone. And if you lose, *then* you can come back and whine about how the system doesn't work. But too many people bitch and moan and don't do anything. Do something!
Have you ever gotten a return letter from your congress person that even sounded like they read your letter? I sure haven't. The responses I get tell me that they either didn't read my letter, but just threw it into a pile of letters for or against something, or they just disregarded whatever I said and sent me a return letter that didn't even address my comments. I'm not sure which it was, and I'm not even sure which scenario pisses me off more. What I do understand is that since I didn't enclose a check for $1000, they couldn't care less what I have to say.
It doesn't automagically apply in other states or nation wide nor does it make it legal for Fox to lie. It only makes it legal to fire reporters in Florida who refuse to lie. Consumer protections as well as libel and other laws still apply.
Ok, I see what you're saying. It doesn't give them permission to lie, but it does make it nearly impossible to prove since Fox employees would basically have to give up their jobs and any chance at a wrongful termination suit in order to bring the truth out. The fact that they aired false information can be proven easily enough, but are the employees that could prove that they did it knowingly going to be willing to give up their livelihood in order to prove it? Seems like if you can't get a license to lie, the ability to severely punish anyone that reveals your lie is the next best thing.
Fines are a lousy motivator. Fines simply make sure corporations don't break the law for small sums of money. If the profit from foul play exceeds the punishment, then it's logical to play against the rules. Hell, if p > (1-c)f (where p = profit, c = chance of getting caught, and f = fine) then it still makes sense to do it if you're inclined to do a little gambling (and business people generally are).
Yeah, and if you read the rest of my post, that's pretty much what I'm talking about. The fines need to be big enough to be an actual punishment if they're to be effective. They need to be determined based on the size and profitability of the company rather than just some flat fee or range. The difficulty of bringing the case needs to be factored in as well. Major additional fines should be added if the company makes any attempt to cover up the crime. These should be extremely harsh. That should at least make them think twice before attempting to cover up a crime and making it that much harder and more expensive for the taxpayers to bring suit against them.
It's been awhile since I took business law, but I seem to remember that, historically, retailers have been given wide latitude in their efforts to promote their wares. They can basically say anything they like about a product, but must stop short of actual lies or deliberate misrepresentation. In other words, they can only get in trouble for something false that was added to the promotion of a product, not something that was taken away. No judge is going to agree with the assertion that failing to publish a user review (whether positive or negative) is fraud or misrepresenting the product.
It's not that they simply fail to publish negative reviews, it's that they present the reviews without any indication that they aren't all of the reviews that were submitted by customers. If they have a "read all reviews" link or they offer an average review score, then they are further misrepresenting the information that they are showing. That should be, and probably already is, illegal. They just need to be called on it so that they will put the appropriate disclaimers in place in a manner that is visible enough to satisfy the law. Much like infomercials have those little disclaimers on the bottom of the screen.
The entire back cover of his new book, Arguing with Idiots, is negative reviews. 7 of them.
That's an old marketing tactic that's been used forever. Look at your target audience, figure out who they don't like, and then tell them that those people that they don't like really hate your product. If they don't like it, then your target audience would love it and they should buy it regardless just to spite those people that they don't like! Genius!:-P
I like reading negative reviews - there have been times that I've read half a dozen positives, and a few negatives, and decided that the product's detractors were clueless boobs, then bought the product. Those clueless boobs actually gave credence to the positive reviews, IMHO.
Like so many others have already said - if you see ONLY positive reviews with 5 star ratings, you should be suspicious.
A smart retailer would include some 3 and 4 star reviews in there as well, just so people don't get too suspicious. They just need to make sure that those reviews knocked off a star or two for petty reasons that most people won't care about. Suddenly they look credible even though the overall review score is probably complete bullshit.
The case, IIRC, revolved around whether they could air information that they knew to be false, just to give the "other side" of an issue, without pointing out that the information was, in fact, false. That they prevailed basically gives them the ability to lie and call it news.
- like when they showed a guy toting a gun plus rifle outside a presidential rally, and the MSNBC reporter said this white man is probably racist against a black president. Problem - the guy carrying the gun was black not white.
There were actually at least 4 people with guns that showed up. Some white, at least one black. They apparently decided to show the one with the most intimidating looking rifle. That shit sells.
Unless it says that these are all reviews, it's your assumption. And that's not illegal for them, just irresponsible of you.
Do you believe what you see in an infomercial to be the actual results of a fair representation of users?
Or do you notice the small print of "dramatization", "up to" or "actors" that are required of these claims in the advertisements by law.
Without a claim that these are all the reviews submitted, they don't need to tell you that they aren't.
You say that there is the small print of "dramatization", "up to" or "actors" for infomercials required by law, which is exactly what I think is being debated here. Why aren't such disclaimers required for these sites when they selectively print user reviews? Simply putting an (*) next to the reviews header with an explanation below that states that they are only presenting selected reviews and that those reviews do not necessarily reflect all the reviews that have been submitted should suffice.
Or would you accept that everybody that submits a resume is obviously biased and reporting on themselves is not a full and complete history. Since they have to include references and contact info for their previous jobs it seems that they are by default not trusted to be a complete and balanced source by themselves. So your example stands as it's own opposition. People do not tell about themselves when trying to impress someone to get a job and everybody knows it and expects no less than embellishment. Hence they ask for outside verification as well.
Or would you accept that everybody that sells stuff on a website is obviously biased and reporting on their stuff is not a full and complete history. Since they have to include reviews for the stuff they sell it seems that they are by default not trusted to be a complete and balanced source by themselves. So your example stands as it's own opposition. People do not tell about themselves when trying to impress someone to sell them something and everybody knows it and expects no less than embellishment. Hence they ask for outside verification as well.
His point is that in a resume, it's understood that you are providing select statements about your qualifications and skills. That's what a resume is. That's comparable to the marketing text for a product.
These "user reviews" are presented as feedback and ratings from users with no indication that they are filtered. One would expect them to be unfiltered unless it says otherwise, especially if they are familiar with big online sites like Amazon or Newegg and others that present the reviews essentially unfiltered, aside from TOS violations.
There's no reason that they shouldn't be required to explicitly state that the reviews are filtered. To do otherwise is absolutely a deceptive business practice.
Most of those things are ridiculous and would probably result in a quick bankruptcy for the corporation. Fines are a good punishment for a corporation because their main motivation is money. There should also be fines and/or jail-time for individuals who authorize and/or commit illegal acts on behalf of the corporation. The main problem we have today is that the fines are nowhere near large enough to serve as a real punishment and deterrent. If they aren't large enough, then the corporation just absorbs them as a cost of doing business and tries harder not to get caught next time. Laws like this bullshit "right to privacy" just make it that much harder to get the evidence needed to convict them.
under Bush the DoJ sent more than one CEO to Club Fed. Ken Lay decided to kill himself first
Yeah, I guess when you utterly fail to detect or act on the kinds of corruption we saw with Enron, and even enable it, you feel some pressure to make examples of a few people after it all blows up and the voters are pissed. Obviously it didn't have any real affect on the leaders of industry since business as usual continued. They reap massive profits which they never have to give back, and the taxpayers bail them out when their massive house of cards comes down. Nice work if you can get it.
I think Jim Brown and Herb Adderly could best support this cause by funding an open source American football game, featuring every NFL team but leaving the names off the jerseys. Either the game companies would have to pay the unlicensed players or EA sports would no longer be the only company that can make an NFL football game. We'd win something.
EA would probably use their leverage with MS and Sony to ensure that it never gets onto either console.
Who needs to find it? All they have to do is have you declare all electronics, remove them from the vehicle and then irradiate the vehicle enough to destroy anything hidden but not destroy the car... you will then say, aha!, I'll just hide the SD card next to the car's computer... which should probably be something they would then know to look for.
Are you going to strip-search everyone too? Irradiate them? Shielding an SD card shouldn't be too tough anyway, especially if you're actually smuggling illegal information that's worth anything at all. Then there's the question of why you'd even bother trying to carry it across the border on a chip. None of this makes any sense at all. Just another excuse for the government to confiscate people's stuff. The War on Drugs excuse has served well, but the War on Terror is even more vague and scares more people.
I second the Linux confusion thing. They probably had MBR problems and had no idea what to do.
At that point they should return her system to her and tell her they have no idea how to load XP on it. Better yet, they could restore it to its original state with the drive image they should have created beforehand. Instead they commit fraud.
So property rights, in your mind, are tested by one's ability to stave off invasion. So property rights can never be violated. If I have land, money, food, furniture stolen from me - tough luck I couldn't defend it so it was not mine to have. What I was able to protect - for that moment - is my property, but if the thugs come again and take more, well then tough luck again, that wasn't my property either because I couldn't defend it.
I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether you think you have a right to it or not. Unless you can defend that right, or get others to defend it for you, your belief that you have a right to it is meaningless. Only through laws do we establish a universally recognized right to property. We do that because it is beneficial to our society in that we can prevent others from taking what is ours by agreeing not to take what is theirs. Same reason we don't consider writings and discoveries to be property, because it is not beneficial to our society to allow any one person or entity to own an idea in perpetuity.
According to a historical document. Are you arguing from authority/tradition?
Try all of human history. Property has never been an absolute right. Property is what you can defend, nothing more. Ideas are even less absolute, as you can't defend them except by never revealing them in the first place.
So whats your point? Did you mistakenly think that we did refuse emergency services?
Apparently you can't read. Not surprising since you also apparently can't be bothered to even consider all the problems with the current system, or simply don't care because you currently have insurance, in which case I must offer a hearty fuck you to you. You're part of the problem.
What happens now when someone with a pre-existing condition gets laid off? They lose their insurance and go onto a temporary plan. But since no insurance company will cover them, they end up with no insurance. Then they end up repeatedly visiting the emergency room until they die. Assholes like you seem to feel that it's ok for people to receive emergency care and nothing more until they die, even though we end up paying for it anyway. At least you think like that until it happens to you.
I suspect it's likely a problem for productivity too since that person is not only no longer able to work, but is also probably a burden on their family and causing others to not be able to work as much. You may think that it's ok for an accident or illness to financially destroy someone, especially if they're poor and can't afford insurance, but a lot of people think that's a seriously fucked up way for a modern country to function and want to change things. I hope it gets done soon and people like you can just fuck off.
On the flip side, thanks to plurality voting in the US you'd also have candidates winning with the support of less than 20% of the electorate (which means less than about 10% of the total population). I don't think that's exactly an improvement.
I think it would be. We'd get a lot more choices that way and combined with some sort of ranked voting system, could represent the wishes of the people better than the retarded system we have now where the least-liked candidate often wins whenever a third candidate enters the race.
Slashdot Mirror
Slander of title, perhaps.
Fraud implies intent.. I think this is just a case of horrendous negligence.
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
How do you accidentally claim to own someone else's copyright? What evidence of ownership do they have that leads them to force MySpace to prevent this guy from offering his own music to his fans?
It doesn't prevent them from revealing knowledge of a lie. It just prevents them from attaching their name to the revelations to some degree. As I said, they can always forward the information to the FCC or another news source anonymously. Of course the FCC will go after the broadcast license of the station which could result in losing their jobs anyways.
But here is a question. If you worked for a news station that purposely lied, would you want to remain working for them and have your professional reputation soiled by their misdeeds? I mean seriously, your professional reputation could go from Lead report for a the county's largest broadcaster to the guy who told all those lies on TV.
That's what I mean about it being a screwed up ruling. Ensuring that they have to come forward with information anonymously and hope that the station doesn't figure out where the leak is rather than giving them the protection they should have is just plain screwed up. I don't understand what justification there could be for not protecting them.
It's not a screwed up ruling. It simply states that the person's claim wasn't valid. Preemptive strike or not, there was a clause in their contract that allowed it to be severed without cause. It wasn't until after that, they threatened to tell the FCC and claim protection. Furthermore, their actions stopped the report from airing at all. Anyways, it didn't prevent anyone from filing a complaint against any news agency for fake or misleading news nor does it give anyone a license to lie.
As I said, it doesn't prevent people from spotting lies and filing complaints. What it does do is prevent employees from revealing knowledge of the lies as they would be quickly fired with no legal recourse. Just pointing out a lie is not really going to make much difference. Being able to show that the station lied knowingly is the hard part.
In September 1997, [2dca.org] WTVT notified Akre and Wilson that it was exercising its option to terminate their employment contracts without cause. Akre and Wilson responded in writing to WTVT threatening to file a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") alleging that the station had "illegally" edited the still unfinished BGH report in violation of an FCC policy against federally licensed broadcasters deliberately distorting the news.
I can only hope it was changed, because that's one seriously screwed up ruling. I'm sure there's more to the story than the station just firing them without cause. That sounds more like a preemptive strike.
What a load of defeatist bullshit.
Have you ever once even *tried* to talk to the people in your congressional office?
If you believe in this, then go fight for it. Take fifteen minutes out of your day and write an email or pick up the phone. And if you lose, *then* you can come back and whine about how the system doesn't work. But too many people bitch and moan and don't do anything. Do something!
Have you ever gotten a return letter from your congress person that even sounded like they read your letter? I sure haven't. The responses I get tell me that they either didn't read my letter, but just threw it into a pile of letters for or against something, or they just disregarded whatever I said and sent me a return letter that didn't even address my comments. I'm not sure which it was, and I'm not even sure which scenario pisses me off more. What I do understand is that since I didn't enclose a check for $1000, they couldn't care less what I have to say.
It doesn't automagically apply in other states or nation wide nor does it make it legal for Fox to lie. It only makes it legal to fire reporters in Florida who refuse to lie. Consumer protections as well as libel and other laws still apply.
Ok, I see what you're saying. It doesn't give them permission to lie, but it does make it nearly impossible to prove since Fox employees would basically have to give up their jobs and any chance at a wrongful termination suit in order to bring the truth out. The fact that they aired false information can be proven easily enough, but are the employees that could prove that they did it knowingly going to be willing to give up their livelihood in order to prove it? Seems like if you can't get a license to lie, the ability to severely punish anyone that reveals your lie is the next best thing.
Fines are a lousy motivator. Fines simply make sure corporations don't break the law for small sums of money. If the profit from foul play exceeds the punishment, then it's logical to play against the rules. Hell, if p > (1-c)f (where p = profit, c = chance of getting caught, and f = fine) then it still makes sense to do it if you're inclined to do a little gambling (and business people generally are).
Yeah, and if you read the rest of my post, that's pretty much what I'm talking about. The fines need to be big enough to be an actual punishment if they're to be effective. They need to be determined based on the size and profitability of the company rather than just some flat fee or range. The difficulty of bringing the case needs to be factored in as well. Major additional fines should be added if the company makes any attempt to cover up the crime. These should be extremely harsh. That should at least make them think twice before attempting to cover up a crime and making it that much harder and more expensive for the taxpayers to bring suit against them.
It's been awhile since I took business law, but I seem to remember that, historically, retailers have been given wide latitude in their efforts to promote their wares. They can basically say anything they like about a product, but must stop short of actual lies or deliberate misrepresentation. In other words, they can only get in trouble for something false that was added to the promotion of a product, not something that was taken away. No judge is going to agree with the assertion that failing to publish a user review (whether positive or negative) is fraud or misrepresenting the product.
It's not that they simply fail to publish negative reviews, it's that they present the reviews without any indication that they aren't all of the reviews that were submitted by customers. If they have a "read all reviews" link or they offer an average review score, then they are further misrepresenting the information that they are showing. That should be, and probably already is, illegal. They just need to be called on it so that they will put the appropriate disclaimers in place in a manner that is visible enough to satisfy the law. Much like infomercials have those little disclaimers on the bottom of the screen.
Ad hominem attacks are never a valid form of argument.
Pointing out the author's own words regarding his experience with the topic would certainly not be considered an ad hominem attack.
The entire back cover of his new book, Arguing with Idiots, is negative reviews. 7 of them.
That's an old marketing tactic that's been used forever. Look at your target audience, figure out who they don't like, and then tell them that those people that they don't like really hate your product. If they don't like it, then your target audience would love it and they should buy it regardless just to spite those people that they don't like! Genius! :-P
I like reading negative reviews - there have been times that I've read half a dozen positives, and a few negatives, and decided that the product's detractors were clueless boobs, then bought the product. Those clueless boobs actually gave credence to the positive reviews, IMHO.
Like so many others have already said - if you see ONLY positive reviews with 5 star ratings, you should be suspicious.
A smart retailer would include some 3 and 4 star reviews in there as well, just so people don't get too suspicious. They just need to make sure that those reviews knocked off a star or two for petty reasons that most people won't care about. Suddenly they look credible even though the overall review score is probably complete bullshit.
The case, IIRC, revolved around whether they could air information that they knew to be false, just to give the "other side" of an issue, without pointing out that the information was, in fact, false. That they prevailed basically gives them the ability to lie and call it news.
MSNBC lies more than FOX
- like when they showed a guy toting a gun plus rifle outside a presidential rally, and the MSNBC reporter said this white man is probably racist against a black president. Problem - the guy carrying the gun was black not white.
There were actually at least 4 people with guns that showed up. Some white, at least one black. They apparently decided to show the one with the most intimidating looking rifle. That shit sells.
Unless it says that these are all reviews, it's your assumption. And that's not illegal for them, just irresponsible of you.
Do you believe what you see in an infomercial to be the actual results of a fair representation of users?
Or do you notice the small print of "dramatization", "up to" or "actors" that are required of these claims in the advertisements by law.
Without a claim that these are all the reviews submitted, they don't need to tell you that they aren't.
You say that there is the small print of "dramatization", "up to" or "actors" for infomercials required by law, which is exactly what I think is being debated here. Why aren't such disclaimers required for these sites when they selectively print user reviews? Simply putting an (*) next to the reviews header with an explanation below that states that they are only presenting selected reviews and that those reviews do not necessarily reflect all the reviews that have been submitted should suffice.
Or would you accept that everybody that submits a resume is obviously biased and reporting on themselves is not a full and complete history. Since they have to include references and contact info for their previous jobs it seems that they are by default not trusted to be a complete and balanced source by themselves. So your example stands as it's own opposition. People do not tell about themselves when trying to impress someone to get a job and everybody knows it and expects no less than embellishment. Hence they ask for outside verification as well.
Or would you accept that everybody that sells stuff on a website is obviously biased and reporting on their stuff is not a full and complete history. Since they have to include reviews for the stuff they sell it seems that they are by default not trusted to be a complete and balanced source by themselves. So your example stands as it's own opposition. People do not tell about themselves when trying to impress someone to sell them something and everybody knows it and expects no less than embellishment. Hence they ask for outside verification as well.
His point is that in a resume, it's understood that you are providing select statements about your qualifications and skills. That's what a resume is. That's comparable to the marketing text for a product.
These "user reviews" are presented as feedback and ratings from users with no indication that they are filtered. One would expect them to be unfiltered unless it says otherwise, especially if they are familiar with big online sites like Amazon or Newegg and others that present the reviews essentially unfiltered, aside from TOS violations.
There's no reason that they shouldn't be required to explicitly state that the reviews are filtered. To do otherwise is absolutely a deceptive business practice.
Most of those things are ridiculous and would probably result in a quick bankruptcy for the corporation. Fines are a good punishment for a corporation because their main motivation is money. There should also be fines and/or jail-time for individuals who authorize and/or commit illegal acts on behalf of the corporation. The main problem we have today is that the fines are nowhere near large enough to serve as a real punishment and deterrent. If they aren't large enough, then the corporation just absorbs them as a cost of doing business and tries harder not to get caught next time. Laws like this bullshit "right to privacy" just make it that much harder to get the evidence needed to convict them.
under Bush the DoJ sent more than one CEO to Club Fed. Ken Lay decided to kill himself first
Yeah, I guess when you utterly fail to detect or act on the kinds of corruption we saw with Enron, and even enable it, you feel some pressure to make examples of a few people after it all blows up and the voters are pissed. Obviously it didn't have any real affect on the leaders of industry since business as usual continued. They reap massive profits which they never have to give back, and the taxpayers bail them out when their massive house of cards comes down. Nice work if you can get it.
I think Jim Brown and Herb Adderly could best support this cause by funding an open source American football game, featuring every NFL team but leaving the names off the jerseys. Either the game companies would have to pay the unlicensed players or EA sports would no longer be the only company that can make an NFL football game. We'd win something.
EA would probably use their leverage with MS and Sony to ensure that it never gets onto either console.
Who needs to find it? All they have to do is have you declare all electronics, remove them from the vehicle and then irradiate the vehicle enough to destroy anything hidden but not destroy the car... you will then say, aha!, I'll just hide the SD card next to the car's computer... which should probably be something they would then know to look for.
Are you going to strip-search everyone too? Irradiate them? Shielding an SD card shouldn't be too tough anyway, especially if you're actually smuggling illegal information that's worth anything at all. Then there's the question of why you'd even bother trying to carry it across the border on a chip. None of this makes any sense at all. Just another excuse for the government to confiscate people's stuff. The War on Drugs excuse has served well, but the War on Terror is even more vague and scares more people.
I second the Linux confusion thing. They probably had MBR problems and had no idea what to do.
At that point they should return her system to her and tell her they have no idea how to load XP on it. Better yet, they could restore it to its original state with the drive image they should have created beforehand. Instead they commit fraud.
They should make it sound like the cars in The Jetsons. If we can't have flying cars, we can at least have cars that sound like flying cars :)
So property rights, in your mind, are tested by one's ability to stave off invasion. So property rights can never be violated. If I have land, money, food, furniture stolen from me - tough luck I couldn't defend it so it was not mine to have. What I was able to protect - for that moment - is my property, but if the thugs come again and take more, well then tough luck again, that wasn't my property either because I couldn't defend it.
I'm saying that it doesn't matter whether you think you have a right to it or not. Unless you can defend that right, or get others to defend it for you, your belief that you have a right to it is meaningless. Only through laws do we establish a universally recognized right to property. We do that because it is beneficial to our society in that we can prevent others from taking what is ours by agreeing not to take what is theirs. Same reason we don't consider writings and discoveries to be property, because it is not beneficial to our society to allow any one person or entity to own an idea in perpetuity.
According to a historical document. Are you arguing from authority/tradition?
Try all of human history. Property has never been an absolute right. Property is what you can defend, nothing more. Ideas are even less absolute, as you can't defend them except by never revealing them in the first place.
So whats your point? Did you mistakenly think that we did refuse emergency services?
Apparently you can't read. Not surprising since you also apparently can't be bothered to even consider all the problems with the current system, or simply don't care because you currently have insurance, in which case I must offer a hearty fuck you to you. You're part of the problem.
What happens now when someone with a pre-existing condition gets laid off? They lose their insurance and go onto a temporary plan. But since no insurance company will cover them, they end up with no insurance. Then they end up repeatedly visiting the emergency room until they die. Assholes like you seem to feel that it's ok for people to receive emergency care and nothing more until they die, even though we end up paying for it anyway. At least you think like that until it happens to you.
I suspect it's likely a problem for productivity too since that person is not only no longer able to work, but is also probably a burden on their family and causing others to not be able to work as much. You may think that it's ok for an accident or illness to financially destroy someone, especially if they're poor and can't afford insurance, but a lot of people think that's a seriously fucked up way for a modern country to function and want to change things. I hope it gets done soon and people like you can just fuck off.
On the flip side, thanks to plurality voting in the US you'd also have candidates winning with the support of less than 20% of the electorate (which means less than about 10% of the total population). I don't think that's exactly an improvement.
I think it would be. We'd get a lot more choices that way and combined with some sort of ranked voting system, could represent the wishes of the people better than the retarded system we have now where the least-liked candidate often wins whenever a third candidate enters the race.