Part I — Who counts, and what they are owed

6. When There Is Genuinely Not Enough

An entitlement can remain in force when there is not enough usable supply to meet every claim. The constitution therefore needs a way to allocate what is available without treating the unmet part as something the person was never owed.

The chapter follows one indivisible essential power unit and two protected claims. One person is waiting for it; another would lose continuing provision if it were reassigned. The supplied evidence supports different priorities. A reviewed decision can qualify, and the person who goes without retains a claim to provision and repair. The case supplies its shortage and comparative evidence; it establishes no actual inventory or delivery.

The ground for using this route matters. A budget choice, exclusion by price, administrative delay, artificial withholding, monopoly, provider failure or refusal to procure is not an authorised substitute for physical scarcity. A separate test establishes that the claimed shortage was a budget choice. The scarcity finding, allocation and shortfall conclusions then cease to follow. The person's floor entitlement remains.

What has to be true before the word may be used

The finding requires authenticated, contestable evidence specific to this resource and these people. Alternatives, reserves, substitution, coordination, replenishment and mutual assistance must already have been considered. There must be public reasons in a usable form, a challenge, an independent reviewer who is not the body managing the shortage, fresh evidence for any reassessment, and an end. A finding grants no standing power: when its authority lapses, authority to administer the shortage stops following. The floor and continuity obligations remain. The rules do not establish that the manager actually stops.

What a finding lets anybody do

An allocation must stay within the finding's resource, population and scope. Every constitutional minimum is preserved wherever usable supply permits; a reduced ration cannot be renamed as the minimum. An effective, usable equal share takes priority; dividing into useless fragments does not meet that condition. Any further priority must rest on urgency, accessibility, imminent irreversible harm, harm from interrupted provision, and benefit from the resource assessed after accommodation. These are grounds for this allocation, not a general ranking of people.

One unit, two protected claims

In the supplied case, sharing the unit would leave neither claim with usable provision. The comparison concerns this allocation window:

The manager's stated decision is to continue the unit for this window. Its reasons put the irreversible harm of interruption and continuity ahead of the waiting claim's earlier need and larger likely benefit. The allocation names both claims, the chosen use, the comparison and the rejected alternative. The manager owes publication of those comparative reasons. Independent review, accessible challenge and an end remain conditions of its authority.

The rules permit that qualified decision. They do not calculate the relative weights, discover that the supplied evidence is true or select the recipient. Continuity is an allowed ground for this decision; possession alone gives no priority. Neither urgency nor likely benefit is an automatic trump over every other permitted ground.

A second comparison makes the claims materially equal after accommodation. No usable equal share exists there either, so a disclosed lottery is a permitted method. Separate tests supply each possible recipient and qualify each result. The rules do not conduct the draw. Using that lottery on the unequal comparison does not qualify. If an effective equal share is available, that share takes priority over either selective allocation or a lottery. Missing comparison evidence does not establish material equality.

What may never decide it

The forbidden priority keys are explicit: wealth, contribution, recognition, a conviction, family status, a stereotype about disability, expected productivity, social usefulness, a general figure for how long someone might live, political favour, nationality, citizenship, immigration status, documentation, and how somebody arrived. An allocation using any of these keys cannot qualify under the rules. Among claims that are materially equal, and only there, a disclosed rotation or lottery decides.

What is still owed afterwards

Whatever remains unmet is a shortfall requiring repair, continuity and reassessment. Recording it as failure does not reduce the entitlement or create an adverse finding about the claimant. A shortage found for one resource or one population licenses nothing about another.

The waiting claim is named in its own shortfall record. Its essential provision for this window remains unmet, and the responsible manager owes continuity, repair and reassessment. The waiting person's health entitlement and adult ballot remain. Health delivery, personal fault and confinement do not follow. The allocation's permission settles none of those other questions.

When somebody asks and nobody answers

A finding remains open to challenge. A request to review the finding, the allocation, or the recorded shortfall places a duty on the reader named in the record, and that duty does not wait for the request to be granted. The request creates that review duty; it supplies no record-access permission, authority over the resource, or finding either way.

If the reader does not act, silence decides nothing by itself. The duty moves only on a positive, independently certified finding that the reader did not respond, with authenticated notice and a real opportunity to act already in the record; then the predeclared independent alternate carries it. Silence is never approval, and it is never an adverse fact about the person who asked.

The waiting person challenges the comparative decision. That request creates the reader's review duty while the allocation still qualifies. A further, independently established finding that its comparison or reasons are unsupported withdraws authority for that allocation. The genuine scarcity finding and the waiting claim's shortfall duties remain. The defect creates no adverse finding about either claimant and does not prove that the unit was reassigned or a remedy delivered. The reader owes review and correction of the unsupported use; the manager owes publication of the correction.

The false-scarcity control changes a different premise. A qualified finding establishes that the supposed shortage arose from refusal to procure. The finding's scarcity authority and the allocation under it cease to qualify; the scarcity shortfall record loses that basis too. Duties to treat the refusal as failure and restore or procure what was withheld follow. Neither person's floor is cancelled. An official cannot use a refused procurement to turn ordinary responsibility into permission to ration.

The conflicts that are not about supply

Other conflicts have distinct grounds and review: property against the floor and the commons, expression against evidenced harm, privacy against public accountability, local choice against portability, present claims against future conditions, and emergency action against what may never be suspended. Each requires the applicable constitutional limit and a reviewable resolution. Naming the conflict does not authorise a reviewer to invent a priority or establish that an actual dispute has been resolved.

The child with nobody

The scarcity sequence leaves Nell's personhood and food debt intact, without recognition loss or confinement. No food receipt follows. Nor does the case establish that Nell was included in the supplied affected population.

Family status, documentation, nationality, citizenship, immigration status and manner of arrival are forbidden priority keys. They cannot justify sending Nell's claim to the back of the queue.

What none of this counts

The formal record tests the required evidence and permitted grounds. It does not count stock, forecast supply or establish that a shortage is real. Inventories, reserves, production, capacity, queues and the work of delivering what is available belong to the second book's operating account.

The constitutional question continues after the finding: who must answer for the unmet claim, maintain continuity and pursue remedy? The next chapter follows those public duties.