I think Jack's answer about who & what have souls is funny... but it is also just as likely as any other, and gives me a way to answer YOU, LH.

"And I also think it's likely that every living thing has a soul...but I don't insist that it MUST be so, because I have no way of knowing for sure. "

And that IS why I ask the question. No one has any way of knowing for sure, but many believe that 'souls' are something a 'god' has provided especially for humans. Perhaps they are right...perhaps YOUR suspicion is right. Perhaps neither is right, and 'soul' is merely a metaphysical concept invented to justify the idea of living forever in a 'heaven'.
Whatever the truth of the matter, once we posit such things as souls and eternity, many thorny theological questions arise: where do souls come from? How many are there? (7 billion people alive today, and many more billions gone..are souls reused? Does 'god' just manufacture them out of...ummm.. quarks?) Many of these questions are hardly ever asked, but because many humans have locked themselves into a theology, they will usually answer such questions by just stating some glib answer that they assume 'fits' what they already accept about other metaphysical concepts- but which usually brings up more new questions than they answer.
This is why, as YOU rightly remark: "A lot of people in this world don't want the heavy responsibility of deciding weighty moral issues for themselves. They prefer to have a government decide.....etc"

I have spent over 50 years now puzzling over how people CAN be so grimly certain of such basic ideas when they see how easy it is for others to be grimly certain of other basic ideas. For leisure reading sometime, take a look at An 'explanation' of Shi'a/Sunni differences in Islam.... and in Christianity and various other belief systems, it is different, but with many of the same results... dissension and strife.

So...why DO I bother with asking this stuff? Easy... in hopes that it will provide some tiny push toward more people saying: "Gee...too many options, maybe there are no real answers to some questions, and we should spend our time trying to figure out just what CAN be known and learn to live together without all the bickering.
Silly quest? *grin*... maybe... but it's more fun than being a part of the silliness of pretending that there ARE answers to questions about souls and the like.... and it keeps my soul brain alive and perking.