[parineum]

> Your way of argumentation can be applied to anything.

That's because it's a good argument. And no, people don't need nutritious food either. Unless you _want_ them to live healthy lives. To satisfy your "want", there is a list of "needs". If you really want to, you can turn any want into a need by applying it to a higher level want. I happen to want people to live long healthy lives but I'm not going to frame that as a "need" because it simply isn't.

> The point is that society should agree on some level of basic needs

Ok, let's start there.

> how you view other people and their requirements for life.

I would _like_ everyone to live a happy and fulfilled life free of suffering. I pay taxes and donate to charity to help provide that for people. It is, however, not a requirement for life or a "need" in any way.

> And yes, if you want the future to be in any way a human future, "being able to raise a family" is absolutely in the "need" column.

Ok. If that's the goal, yes. Is that the goal? People are having children at a sub-replacement level. It doesn't seem like that's really a goal for those people.

I _want_ to live in a free society. I _want_ there to be no or minimal human suffering. If humanity goes extinct through a process of dwindling birthrates because people choose not to have children, I really could not care less.

Every "need" has an implicit "in order to accomplish [goal]" on the end of it. Framing something as a "need" assumes a common goal which is often abused people to put more and more things into the "need" column when there is no consensus goal.

So what do people "need" housing for? The availability of affordable housing is already an accomplished goal. The availability of affordable housing in NYC is not an accomplished goal.

The availability of affordable housing in NYC is only a need for the survival of NYC itself which I, again, could not care less about (provided humans don't suffer in the collapse).

People talk past each other constantly by omitting their priors discussing these things. When you say "housing is a need", for what? And in the context of this article, I'd interpret your statement of "need" to be NYC specific so, "housing in NYC is a need", for what?

[vouwfietsman]

Feel free to reframe the word "need" into a philosophical all or nothing, what-does-it-even-mean-to-want-something kind of way, but then there's no common ground to discuss anything on. Talk about omitting priors, how about this prior: lets use words the way people use words generally.

If you don't consider happiness and lack of suffering a goal that is worthy of using the word "need" you are just doing some Jordan Peterson-esque word salad defense of something that cannot be coherently understood outside your in-group, even if you wrote a book on it.