The Society You Would Build If You Didn't Know Who You Were

Imagine being asked to design the rules of the world. You get to decide everything. How much people should earn. Howmuch tax they should pay. Who gets healthcare. How education works.
What happens when someone becomes unemployed. How society treats the poor. Howmuch power governments should have. How wealth is distributed. You can build wherever kind of society you want. There is only one catch.
Before the world begins. You won't know who you will be in it.
You won't know whether you will be born into a billionaire's family or a family struggling to afford food. You won't know whether you'll be healthy or disabled. You won't know whether you'll be highly intelligent or have learning difficulties.
You won't know whether you'll be powerful or completely powerless. You won't know your gender, religion, nationality,social class , or race. You don't even know whether you'll be born into a peaceful country or one destroyed by war. Now design the society.
Suddenly, the decision, becomes much harder. This is the Veil of Ignorance. a thought experiment purposed by philosopher John Rawls. In his theory of justice. The idea is brutally clever.
Take away your knowledge of where you will stand in society, and see what kind of rules you would consider fair.when we know we are going to be. rich , inequality doesn't seem particularly frightening. When we know we will be poor. It looks very different.
If you knew you would be healthy your entire life. Perhaps healthcare whouldn't seem like your problem. But what if you were the person . Who. needed lifelong treatment?. If you knew you would. be academically gifted, you might support an education system built around competition. But what if you were. born with a disability?.
If you knew you would. Inheritmillions, inheritance taxes might seem unfair.bBut what if you were born into poverty with if you were born into poverty with absolutely nothing?. The veil removes. The convenient assumption that you will be the idea lucky one.And that is where the idea becomes uncomfortable.
Most people want fairness. But sometimes what we call fairness simply means.
"Don't take away what benefits me".
We defend systems differently depending on which side of them we occupy. A wealthy person may call high taxation theft
A poor person may call it Redistribution. A successful student may call competitive education meritocracy.
A struggling student may call it an unequal race. A powerful person may call freedom the right to do whatever they want. A powerless person may ask who protects them when that freedom harmsbthem. The veil of ignorance forces you to remove your own identity from the equation.
You aren't allowed to say.
"What would benefit people like me?".
Because you don't know who "people like me" will be. You have to ask.
"What system would I accept if I could end up anywhere inside it?".
And that question changes everything. Perhaps you would still allow inequality. Perhaps you would still reward talent,effort and ambition. Rewls never argued that everyone must have exactly the same wealth or outcome.
The deeper question is whether the rules are defensible before you know where you will land. Because life begins with a lottery. You don't choose your parents. You Don't choose birthplace. You don't choose your. Genetics.
You don't choose your childhood. You don't choose many of the Circumstances that shapes your future. Yet we often judge people as though everyone started from the same starting line. The Vell of ignorance asks us to imagine designing that starting line without knowing which runner we will be.