"Want" and "need" is something that requires clarity and introspection. It is easy to confuse the two, especially ones that are deeply embedded in the psyche.
What's often the case is that there is a real need underneath a want, but that deeper, more essential need is not expressed in the same way as the want.
To use the jeans example, "'cause they look good", the deeper need will be somewhere along the lines of, needing to belong; needing approval of others; needing to feel a certain way. It depends on the person. Some people have a very clear idea of what these underlying needs are ... many of us humans, don't. Getting those jeans might temporarily satisfy the want, but without addressing the underlying needs, a person will now seek out something else in hopes to satisfy that deeper need.
As a tangent: there is a way to probe even deeper needs underlying those needs too. When done iteratively and radically honestly (which means going deeper than survival needs) across many different wants, there is a surprising result: it generally converges on single basic need. However, since this is probing deeper than survival needs, it isn't something that a society, technology, or a system can provide. It certainly won't be something that one can easily "work for".
My point is: I agree, societies and communities should look at providing basic needs. However, there are some things that cannot be addressed with material goods, as long as there is mass confusion. Withholding those material things don't necessarily help either.
It's interesting that you use a metaphor of "going deeper." The way I came to the same conclusion (that, at some point, all of us share a common goal) was to view the problem not 'deeper' but more and more abstractly -- you can get to a point where you've abstracted away any specific rung of, for example, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.
And while, yes there is a limit to how far we'll get without wide-spread introspection of our own thought-processes (as opposed to our thought-content), we could afford people the space to do so.
Thanks for the comments. Most of the below are tangential.
By "going deeper", I mean that there is a directionality to using awareness that is best described as "deeper", as that is the experiential signature. The methods I used involved dissecting the experience and emotions with awareness, usually by modifying consciousness. I was introduced to it with shamanic practices, but my usual method was developed through mindfulness meditation (to develop sufficient clarity) and chanting a specific Sanskrit mantra.
So for the jeans example -- to make it more concrete and use a real example, at one point in my life, I bought tactical gear. A friend of mine's even called it, "tacticool". To probe this with the my awareness, I'd rest my awareness on the actual emotions associated with "tacticool". When I was less skilled at this, this took a long time to familiarize myself with the different experiences that might arise from this. There are physical sensations, for example, that comprise of particular emotions, which form the sum of the actual emotional state itself. These are patterns of tension, heat or cold, etc. Then there are the emotional states, which has its own movement, texture, and are clearly _not_ physical. I eventually was able to see how this maps to thoughts. Any given thought will have an emotional basis, although some concepts are so pure (or abstract) that they have a very light footprint. I learned to tune my awareness of a given emotional state from the physical, through the emotional, and to the various narratives/stories it might carry. So when I dissect the desire and attachment to "tacticool", there are very specific images and emotional flows that come through it. There are aggregations of different emotional states, which in turn might be linked to other parts of the psyche. Examples arising when I'm probing this as I write this right now: wanting to be seen as a badass, tough, resilient, etc.; eschewing normal gear to set oneself apart; deeper still, the need to stand out, the need to stand apart, the _fear_ of not being seen, the _fear_ of being alone. I'll stop there; any further will sound too woo.
Further, any given emotion can be given form, even sentience in which one can then interact with anthromorphically. That is, there are shamanic/tantric methods that lets a particular emotional flow take form into a person which you can then have a conversation with about wants and needs. One in particular, detailed in Tsultrim Allione's _Feeding Your Demons: Ancient Wisdom for Resolving Inner Conflict_, goes one step beyond "wants" and the underlying "need", by asking for "how will you feel when you get what you need" (a neat NLP trick, going directly to the result).
Getting back more on topic: I agree about giving people the space to do that. However, I also think that in our race to modernity, we broke and severed a lot of traditional wisdom that helps in this very thing. In more communally-oriented societies, giving a tribe member space is likely more to be a given. (Sure, it depends on the tribe and the culture).
What's often the case is that there is a real need underneath a want, but that deeper, more essential need is not expressed in the same way as the want.
To use the jeans example, "'cause they look good", the deeper need will be somewhere along the lines of, needing to belong; needing approval of others; needing to feel a certain way. It depends on the person. Some people have a very clear idea of what these underlying needs are ... many of us humans, don't. Getting those jeans might temporarily satisfy the want, but without addressing the underlying needs, a person will now seek out something else in hopes to satisfy that deeper need.
As a tangent: there is a way to probe even deeper needs underlying those needs too. When done iteratively and radically honestly (which means going deeper than survival needs) across many different wants, there is a surprising result: it generally converges on single basic need. However, since this is probing deeper than survival needs, it isn't something that a society, technology, or a system can provide. It certainly won't be something that one can easily "work for".
My point is: I agree, societies and communities should look at providing basic needs. However, there are some things that cannot be addressed with material goods, as long as there is mass confusion. Withholding those material things don't necessarily help either.