Need
In other words, a need is something required for a safe, stable and healthy life (e.g. air, water, food, land, shelter) while a want is a desire, wish or aspiration.
Basic needs such as air, water, food and protection from environmental dangers are necessary for an organism to live.
[1] Needs and wants are a matter of interest in, and form a common substrate for, the fields of philosophy, biology, psychology, social science, economics, marketing and politics.
To most psychologists, need is a psychological feature that arouses an organism to action toward a goal, giving purpose and direction to behavior.
People tend to spend most of their resources (time, energy and finances) attempting to satisfy these basic before the higher order needs of belonging, esteem and self-actualization become meaningful.
This requires mental health, cognitive skills, and opportunities to participate in society's activities and collective decision-making.
The authors point to rational identification of needs, using up-to-date scientific knowledge; consideration of the actual experiences of individuals in their everyday lives; and democratic decision-making.
This idea is discussed in more detail by the Hungarian philosopher Ágnes Heller in A Theory of Need in Marx (London: Allison and Busby, 1976).
Political economy professor Michael Lebowitz[10] has developed the Marxian interpretation of needs further in two editions of his book Beyond Capital.
Human beings are also free entities able to accomplish, during their lifetime, the objective possibilities generated by social evolution, on the basis of their conscious decisions.
Such needs might include demand for a particular type of business, for a certain government program or entity, or for individuals with particular skills.
At one end of this spectrum for example, any practising clinician would accept that a child with fulminating meningococcal meningitis needs rapid access to medical care.
At the other end, rarely could a young healthy woman be deemed to need breast augmentation.
