When will all this crazy talk end? My kids, when they were much younger, used to play this game called, Opposite day. Everything you said meant the exact opposite. It was their early attempt at understanding the absurd.
I realize this post is far afield from finance and the retail financial advisory biz, but I just can't take it anymore. Over the last year or so, I often feel like we are literally living in Opposite Day Land. It seems that all normal rules of human action have been turned upside down. Politicians are intent upon socializing the health care system (despite the fact that most Americans don't want it), neo-Malthusians are predicting the End of the World (and too many people are listening, hoping to pass some sort of "world agreement" where the industrialized world will have to tithe to the developing world) and now, the Times of London, though owned by the sensible Rupert Murdoch, seems to be advocating that dolphins should be accorded rights, as in human rights.
The article says that dolphins are so smart -- the smartest species after humans -- that they not only need to be protected, but should be accorded a special status. The article says: "Thomas White, professor of ethics at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, who has written a series of academic studies suggesting dolphins should have rights, . . . says, 'The scientific research . . . suggests that dolphins are ‘non-human persons’ who qualify for moral standing as individuals.'" The article didn't challenge the research, didn't seek other opinions, as most journalists do in any story they file.
I can't speak on the quality of the science behind the pronouncement that "proves" that dolphins have the intelligence of three-year-old humans. But I do believe the problem with such craziness --- about equating animals a moral status of humans -- is that it literally degrades humans. I want to ask the researchers: If they were in a life threatening situation, who do you save first: The dolphin or the three-year-old human? It's absurd. Will dolphins qualify for universal health care, for example? Will they be able to sue zoos for their freedom?