  First, there is no general reason to think that people will be equally effective in converting need-satisfying resources into satisfied needs. This will depend, for example, on the body’s capacity to metabolize food or medicine. So a distribution of resources that is proportionate to initial need claims won’t necessarily bring about a proportionate decrease in those claims. Second, even if conversion rates are the same, applying the proportionality principle will still leave those with larger initial claims worse off. For example, suppose we only have enough food to supply 600 kcal of energy to the two people in the previous paragraph. Using the proportionality principle, we award 400 kcal to the first person and 200 kcal to the second. But the outcome is that the first person is left with an unsatisfied claim for 600 kcal and the second for only 300 kcal. Intuitively, this is not what it means to attend to their needs fairly.