I am a vegetarian and agree with most of the article up until the very last sentence - "where would you have stood on the issue of slave labour" or words to that effect.
I feel like that confuses the issue and makes it easier to argue against - humans are very clearly different to dolphins and equating the two does noone any favours.
Humans are certainly different to dolphins, but I sure hope that some alien race doesn't land on Earth some day and say "It's ok to kill and enslave humans indiscriminately because even though they are sentient and intelligent, they are very different from us Xlarblargians."
This is very simply an extension of the Golden Rule to other sentient species beyond humans, starting with the ones that we know about and are closest to us.
And as Colin points out, the "equating X to humans does no one any favours" line has been used before in history.
"These savages are clearly different
from civilised people"
and I can easily imagine them saying:
"... and equating the two does no one any favours."
There's the point of the entire article: In the future, perhaps people will find it incomprehensible that we, today, considered humans different from dolphins in a significant aspect.
I don't believe it is comparing apples and oranges. It was once considered by some slave owners to be a mere trifling problem occasionally to beat one of them to death, or work them to death, or otherwise behave in ways that are now considered unacceptable.
In the same way, some people put dolphins in captivity, and consider it an inconvenient side-effect of tuna fishing that dolphins are regularly killed in large numbers. And yes, some people eat dolphins, and that supports an industry that kills them for profit, just as slave traders used to capture people and ferry them across oceans. For profit. Deaths of a percentage were considered acceptable losses.
It seems to me that the parallels are stronger than the differences, and I also wonder how people of the future will judge the actions of today, and silence of those who didn't speak up.
The corollary is that even "wasted" votes (eg. for no-hoper third party candidates) matter. Mainstream politicians take those into account and adjust their policies accordingly. They do this because those votes for third parties dilute their own voting base, and they want to avoid splitting off even fractions of their own constituency.
Examples from the UK:
- The Conservatives are desperate to take on policies from UKIP and even the BNP, even though those two parties have no chance of gaining real power.
- The Green party has 1 MP and next to no chance everywhere else, but they have (or had, until the recession) a huge influence on politics.
> - The Conservatives are desperate to take on policies from UKIP and even the BNP, even though those two parties have no chance of gaining real power.
Just out of interest which policies are you talking about?
A side project doesn't need customers, a side project doesn't need money, a side project just needs to be something that you want to do. If it makes money, great! If not, it doesn't matter because you are doing it for yourself and noone else.
