Humans don't have needs

Humans don't have needs, so that's a deliberately provocative title. We do talk about things that humans need; we say humans need food, shelter, love. What we usually mean by a human need is something that humans require to stay alive or healthy. We say that you can't put a price on a human life, which implies that human life is infinitely valuable.

The idea is that a need is distinct from a want because a mere want has a finite value, but a need derives a special status from its support of human life, which is of infinite value. So, human needs are presented as though they are qualitatively different from human wants, but that's not the case at all. Humans value things; we can think about a ranking of things in order of how much we value them.

We choose things we value more over things we value less. Maintaining life and health fit into the same continuum as eating chocolate and going to the cinema. Sometimes, humans value their lives less than they value something else. We know this because some people choose to end their lives.

For some people, like joyriders or soldiers who enlist voluntarily, we might say that maintaining life ranks less highly in their list of values than it does for others because they're prepared to take bigger risks than other people are in service of realizing other values. No one has a more accurate insight into how another person's values are arranged than the person actually holding those values does.

By pretending that human needs are qualitatively distinct from human wants, rather than part of the same continuum of values, authoritarians have a way to justify the existence of tyrannical institutions. So, let the market take care of subjective wants and luxuries, but the state must be in charge of guaranteeing the satisfaction of universal, non-negotiable human needs.

Of course, the state is also in charge of determining exactly what those needs are. But if human needs means anything, it must mean simply the things that an individual values the most highly. Very often, people value their life and health highly, but no two people value them in the same way.

So, the idea that there are universal and non-negotiable human needs is a fiction. I'll close with an excerpt from David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom," where he's explaining why the idea of human needs is not only wrong but dangerous.

The idea of need is dangerous because it strikes at the heart of the practical argument for freedom. That argument depends on recognizing that each person is best qualified to choose for himself which among a multitude of possible lives is best for him. If many of those choices involve needs—things of infinite value to one person—which can be best determined by someone else, what is the use of freedom?

If I disagree with the experts about my needs, I make not a value judgment but a mistake.