FF:"NEEDS: Food, Water, Shelter DESIRES: Most basic is Freedom. "

Power is nice to have, also, but sometimes hard to use constructively, as with an atom bomb.

I am just speculating about Maslow's political orientation, getting there by the short cut of observing that he was some kind of social sciences academician, with possible social engineering ramifications.

To see how social engineering motives can conflict with "other" legitimate objectives, such as maintaining a healthy democratic republic under law and true justice (U.S. Constitution as a basic social contract) one may need only to go to the day's news, where the probable legal rights of over 400 FLDS bigamy adherents in Texas got hauled away, evidently relying merely on the lies of a 33 year old woman of doubtful (to me at this point) sanity or integrity.

Whatever the social and legal implications of practicing bigamy are, I am doubting right now that the State of Texas as a surrogate parent will do much better at achieving maximum potential/happiness than the enlarged FLDS families were doing for themselves. Also, Texas sinks to a lawless level itself, in dealing with the probably inflated "abuses".