>> If people can easily satisfy their basic needs, they simply expands this concept until it ceases to be easily satisfied.
> Decent living standards for 8.5B people would require 30% of current resource use
That claims seems to be based on your first link.
1. They define decent living standards as including things like 1 cooking appliance, a mobile phone, and internet, but not things like a dishwasher/microwave/Netflix account, etc.
2. To achieve this, they specifically say that existing resource uses that are wasteful, such as buying extra clothing, wasteful entertainment, etc, should be “reallocated” to the basic needs of society, as without reallocation they explicitly point to how the basic needs like food and shelter become too expensive.
So in the context of the grandparent commenter’s argument, we would have to take away a lot of the luxuries (which is probably a fair description) that most Americans have like entertainment, buying more clothes than they need, etc and would not include things like any trips/travel, eating out, etc - and you believe people would react the opposite of what the grandparent claimed, that they would not consider those things to be “basic needs”? I guess if we were truly able to eliminate most inequality and all millionaires, etc, then maybe people would accept life without those existing things they have as basic needs? But I am not sure if your argument is meant to be a thing that could happen in real life, or merely a “If I was dictator I'd ensure peace on earth” type idea?