Nope.  There are tribes that have lived without the need for clothing.  Depending on your environment and lifestyle, clothing could be considered a luxury.

Although there actually is one need which was forgotten: reproduction.  While it isn't a need for individual survival, it's necessary for survival as a species.

Zarf: My attack was un-needed yes, however Flint requiring me to tippy-toe around him and beg his forgiveness is a bit silly, and if anything such idiotic responses make me dig in more... childish yes, but meh this is a childish forum....

Flint: As I said, those would be the basic needs, but like clothes there are other 'needs' required depending on the society you live in... Transportation would be needed in some places, in others communication devices. These are not needs in the very basic sense of the word yes, but they can be secondary needs that would be needed to be taken into account to determine a level of poverty in a specific society.

Zarf, wonderful you caught up old chap. Politics forum has long not been a place of logic or political debate, with many posters not showing any desire to actually debate or discuss an issue, but prefering flaming and name calling. Flint is one of the people who in my mind is a lost cause, and in most cases I try not to enter intelligent debate with him as it is worthless to try and more entertaining to not. I have not worked out yet if getting my ban with him is a win or not. It is the ultimate in flaming him, but means I am out of the game.

However you I see as different, and I do actually support your ideal of transforming politics forum from the flame fest it was into an actual forum of intellectial debate on a wide range of topics, so for you I appoligise and withdraw my comments about Flint. I still see no reason to respond to flint in the way flint wants me too, however I do appoligise for my orginal posting, as it was childish and not in the spirit of debate, which at least around you and others that show similar 'spirit of debate' I shall  restrain from flaming.

As I said, I do like your ideal to make politics an actual intellectual forum, not the childish flaming that happens...

Ahh the good old days

Don't worry, xeno, I haven't forgotten about you.  I still have a tab open with my reply being written. 

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> This notion rests on the assumption that the system evolved according to some Social-Darwinist notion.

Didn't know you were a Nazi, Zarf. 

1: Godwin's Law.  The first person to compare someone to a Nazi or Hitler in a debate loses.  You remember this from a few months ago, yes?  In fact, when I called it on somebody who, at the time was debating against you, you affirmed it and made fun of him for it. 

Oh, and the reason why this is a good thing is shown in your most recent post:

>"I encourage that anyone who would like to see the Politics community restored to a better level of debate stand alongside this ban, until you_fool honestly makes efforts to give amenities for his actions."

Spoken like a true Social Darwinist.  /me claps

Seriously, just insert 'Germany' for 'Politics community' and 'righteousness' for 'debate' and 'the Jew' for 'you_fool' and it's similarity to something Hitler might have said in a speech is uncanny!<

Okay, so in other words, the following is Social Darwinist/Nazi:

I encourage that anyone who would like to see ____________ restored to a better level of _______ stand alongside this ban, until _______ honestly makes efforts to give amenities for his actions.

So anyone who wants to improve something, and/or see someone make amends for a transgression is a Nazi?  Is that seriously your argument?  Or do you assume I said those nouns which you inserted in my sentence?

Oh, I've got an idea!  I'll do the exact same thing!

xeno syndicated said:
"Other potential causes of poverty include poor government policy decisions, excessive greed of the rich and elites, multinational corporations, the structure of societal institutions, and influential individuals."

Okay, if we replace "rich and elites" with "Jews and [I would get banned for saying it]," that would make you a Nazi, wouldn't it?  Holy shit, that must mean you're a Nazi, doesn't it?  It's amazing what you can do when you change one noun with whatever noun you like!

2: What's your alternate theory to Social Darwinism being the cause of the rise of the city.  Remember, people didn't begin life in cities.  They actually began in more tribal communities, and planted themselves later.  There has to be a reason why humans chose this way of existence, and why it has persevered over the centuries.

3: Seriously, you resorted to personal attacks even before starting to argue with me?  What the hell?  Could you try being even remotely civil and respectful of others?

4: Sure, I'll defend that society evolved according to Social Darwinism, at least at the macro level.  Let's evaluate the key social construct that we're discussing and examine how it developed:

The city.  Why, historically, would people move away from small communities?  Well, let's look at that.  (Remember, we're talking in the context of society's evolution, so we have to look at these questions in the context of ancient cities, not modern ones)

1: Security in the Ancient world
First, let's ask a simple question: What does a nation need, militarily, to ensure its security?  Yes, generally it would be nicer if the nation could just get along with others.  But when cultures completely divorced from your own culture are expanding into your region, it's hard to drop the sword and tell Attila the Hun "Let's get along!"

First, you're going to need people.  Some nice strong men or women (generally, best if men... not trying to be sexist, but in an age where population growth was so important, men are more easily replaced than women, at least biologically).
So we have 20,000 people... now what?  I guess they could wrestle, except the other guys have swords.  So second, you'll need natural resources.  Iron, bronze, timber, oil... all of it!  Plus we'll need supplies, including food and water, to ensure the troops can deploy for extended periods of time.
Now we've got a bunch of resources and a bunch of guys.  The next step is to create the industrial capacity to harness those resources.  We'll need iron smiths to give our soldiers proper weapons and armor.  We'll need a military camp to train our soldiers so they aren't just running around, swinging a sword randomly.  We'll need engineers to create proper defenses within our own community.  And if our soldiers actually go to war, we'll need effective generals to be able to manage battlefield conditions to maximize troop efficiency.

Now let's look at the two different community types.  First, a city:
1: Since a city focuses a large amount of people into a small region, an ancient city could be easily fortified.  With some walls around a city, we could significantly stall invasions, as trying to scale a wall leaves troops in extremely vulnerable positions.
2: A city gives the state communication access to thousands of people with relative ease.  With one or two recruiting stations, you could easily round up a good number of people.
3: Natural resources is the tricky part here.  Generally, cities were built near regions of economic importance.  However, that importance is difference from one city to another.  For example, Constantinople survived largely because it was a major port between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, two major centers of trade.  Natural resources?  Perhaps some, but its major purpose was as a center of trade.

That being said, cities have two potential ways to obtain natural resources needed.  First is through harvesting.  Now we can't really determine how effective the city is in harvesting natural resources, relative to the small community.  The only thing I can note here is the issue of specialization: If a person works on a farm directly surrounding a city, that person doesn't need to take the time out of working on their harvest to fix farming equipment, sew clothes, etc.  He can focus more on tasks in which he excels, reducing potential waste.

In addition, however, cities can obtain resources through networking.  Let's take an example of a trade center that has little, if any, natural resources.  Imagine a city that is only busy because it is located in a key peninsula that allows ships to dock and resupply, and for goods to be shipped to and from the region.  Gibraltar and Singapore are also good examples of this.  Anyway, these cities set up networking connections with other cities through the trade that goes through the city.  Thus, these cities can easily develop secure trade agreements with other cities for needed goods, primarily because they have the capital infrastructure necessary to obtain those resources (shipping
docks, warehouses), and generally become wealthy enough through shipping that they have the money to buy said resources.

Note: This creates a slight issue with my argument which I must stress: I am not here to say that rural communities are 100% dead.  Obviously, societies of all types need a portion of land used for food production.  In fact, the thesis behind my argument rests on the assumption that some people are willing to retain agricultural lifestyles, provided they sell food to cities in exchange for goods and services from those cities.

4: Cities have a natural ability to manufacture goods.  Two reasons.  First, strong trade routes mean that trade cities are easily able to find the cheapest price for resources in order to ensure a constant stream of production, then turn around and sell those goods, using the same trade routes the city already accesses, to sell goods to a huge amount of customers.  Second, the large amount of manpower in a city means that labor-intensive manufacturing processes can be accomplished here.

The result?  If a city was to be conquered in ancient times, armies couldn't just walk into town.  A well fortified city could go into siege mode, lasting for months without imports of food in the hopes that an allied army would save them.  The defender, meanwhile, needed to keep thousands of troops in constant supply in enemy territory for months on end,

Now what about the small agricultural community?

You have a small amount of people spread out over a large land area.  That's bad.
1: Some defenses, such as walls, were unusable.  Sure, the Great Wall of China obviously proves that it is possible to accommodate such large land areas.  But that wall required millions of people to build.  Not saying that protecting a farm area would need that many people, but it would need a good amount of people... probably more than could be spared within a farming community.
2: Where do you recruit soldiers from?  Recruiters have to essentially go door to door now to find soldiers.
3: No specialization of labor=nobody to take up the industrial practices in a community=Very few, or very ineffective swords.

Also, since rural communities are focused in farmland, they are usually unlikely to be near natural resources such as iron or copper.

Issue #2 is economic efficiency.  I already explained the concept of labor specialization in response to You_Fool (before the whole ban issue was discussed, reference those posts).  The only thing left is to apply it to ruralism+urbanism.

In urban societies, you have thousands, if not millions, of people in a relatively small area, able to organize with each other to produce resources.

Let's be 100% honest: everyone has personal weaknesses.  Take me for example.  I have little upper body strength.  I don't know any foreign languages.  If you asked me to paint a picture for you, you would get a stick figure.  I've never built anything that wasn't made out of Legos.  Considering you will probably say I'm an idiot like you've said most times when I try to explain specialization of labor, we can put stupidity as another personal flaw.

In a world where we are living on our own, each person has to take up all the tasks they need to live.  But hell, look at the bunch of flaws I have (and I'm only naming off a few flaws).  I would be terrible with much of the farming I would need to accomplish due to my terrible strength.  I couldn't build my own cabin.  I would even have trouble just going to a nearby river and bringing water to my house.

And what about our strengths?  I don't want to sit here and brag about myself, so for this section, I want to use another example.  Assume Einstein (Albert, not Flint) lived in a world without labor specialization.  He had a gift of being able to understand and imagine highly abstract concepts, allowing him to greatly advance science.  How much more difficult would it be for him to have discovered those achievements if he spent 80% of his working time growing corn instead of running algorithms?

The more people we have in a single community, the more we can explore each individual person and find what that person's strengths (currently done by the education system+other programs at childhood age).  The more we discover the strengths of each individual, the more we can tap into what makes that person special, and find a place where that person can achieve the self actualization they're looking for, rather than forcing everyone to be a farmer.

Honestly, if a person wants to be a farmer, and they're good at that job, the world I describe lets them pursue that goal, and actually encourages them to pursue that goal, as a good farmer is good for society as a whole since it produces additional resources.  A world without urbanization and specialization forces people to pursue those careers which they don't like, and which they are less able to handle, reducing that person's happiness and efficiency.

By the way, Flint, I forgot to say: why do you still have your You_Fool ban?  He's apologized and removed any semblance of the original violation... think we can remove that?

1: In the world where xeno has historically acknowledged the validity of the law, it applies in his case. 
2: There's justifications for the law.
A: It prevents threads from degenerating into utter flame-wars by cutting off a thread as it's about to cross that critical mass.
B: It identifies and distinguishes those who are debating vs. those who are just flaming.
3: Nice last line. 

>>By the way, Flint, I forgot to say: why do you still have your You_Fool ban?  He's apologized and removed any semblance of the original violation... think we can remove that? <<

Flint is unlikely too as he thinks I need to bow to him, beg his forgiveness then do all I can to appease him before he will lift the ban. Part of my reasoning for not worrying too much about it was the fact that doing all that was inappropiate and also pointless, as he would see it as reasoning why he was right all along...

About Godwin's law.  I thought it interesting at first, and referred to it, yes, once or twice, but never really thought it a valid reason to end a debate.  If you're being Social Darwinistic, I'll point it out.  And that doesn't mean I'm flaming. 

And so I'm calling you out on it Zarf: it is social darwinistic to assume any social system 'evolved' due to a natural selection process.  It ignores the role that social institutions themselves play in forming the social system. 

Zarf.  Let me attemp to sum up your position.  Please just answer I am right or wrong.  Then, after I am sure I have understood your position correctly, I'll construct a response.

You think that societal institutions such as militaries, public education systems, public transportation systems, governmental bureaucracies, etc, and even specialized labor itself (if that can be considered an institution) have evolved as result of their utilitarian benefits to the greater good / survival / prosperity / of a given society; the kinds and structures of these institutions have shaped the continuance of a given society, and even led to the superiority of a given society over others.  What you would define as the superiority of one society over another is the complexity and magnitude of that society's institutions; that society's ability to maintain a denser, more urbanized population; and the extent to which that society's labor force is more diversely specialized.

Correct?