I wouldn't consider it bare minimum. Most of the web is broken with NoScript installed.
More accurately, most of the web is broken, whether or not NoScript is installed — it's just that you can see that it's broken when NoScript is installed.
If I have to turn on >5 websites to see the content it suddenly has less value and I shrug and close
99% of the distraction, tracking, annoyance of the modern web are due to JS. Blocking it will not "break most sites", you can usually read just fine. Selectively allowing JS per domain works great. Try it, you might be surprised and not talk down to us anymore.
The point is I do not want a bunch of insecure code running on my computer just to read some text, which is what I usually do in a browser.