A lot of people can get by with a single knife. I think OP here is a lot deeper into the hobby of either cooking or knives. I can acknowledge at least that deboning a chicken or turkey with a santoku isn't very pleasant

For me:

• Thinner boning/fish knife for finding cartilage seams between bones, or deboning certain cuts. My chef's knife is too big to navigate a curved path through meat, at least not precisely.
• Thicker/heavier cleaver for cutting through bones directly. I don't want to chip my chef's knife blade on very forceful cuts.
• Rectangular Nakiri is great for chopping firm vegetables with a blade edge that's in a straight line, rather than the curved edge of a chef's knife (which usually calls for a rocking or slicing motion when chopping).
• Serrated bread knife for bread. I don't want to be crushing a freshly baked loaf too much while slicing into it.
• Cheap/shitty serrated bread knife for ice.
• Long carving knife for presentation, tableside carving of a roast or ham or things like that. If I'm carving back in the kitchen I'm probably just using a chef's knife rather than grabbing something new to have to clean.

Everything else in the kitchen, I use a chef's knife. I had a one-knife kitchen for like the first 10 years of my adult life, before branching out to a vegetable knife and a boning knife. The other stuff is more recent (ice knife when I got really into cocktails around 2015, bread knife when I was part of that sourdough craze of 2020).

I also have knives for serving (butter knives, steak knives, cheese knives for charcuterie platters, etc.), but that's not really a kitchen function.

i have a nice hecknels 8” “universal” chefs knife. if i could only have one that might be it, but with all the choices, its never the best for anything and i ended up never using it so its now in storage.

A good chef's knife serves a lot of purposes very well and gets the most use in my house. But some knives are better for some tasks. I have a chefs knife that I use for the majority of chopping tasks for cooking prep. But I also have paring knifes for slicing small things, fruits, cheese, etc. or where finess is required that a chef knife is too unwieldy for the job, a bread knife for bread (duh), a boning knife (it doesn't get a ton of use but is nice to have when needed), and a very nice Santoku knife I only whip out when I need to butcher a chicken or something and need a bit if chef knife and a bit of cleaver. I also have serrated knives for cutting meats, and butter knives for butters and spreads.

Seriously, I have a chef's knife, santoku, and a paring knife and I feel bougie as fuck.

Yeah, I always wonder, if it's a matter of having multiple knives in rotation, so they don't dull as quickly and so you can keep some in the sink until you do the dishes.
Because if you've got the space and the money to spare, then using the slightly more optimal knife isn't extra effort anymore.

But yeah, I'm also of the opinion that if you keep your knife sharp, then it can split those atoms, and that's ultimately what we're here for.
So, personally, I'd rather not spare the space for having multiple tools with the same purpose. ¯\_(⊙ʖ⊙)/¯