Imagine you're behind a veil before birth. You don't know if you will be born rich, poor, healthy, disabled, in a war zone, or a palace. What laws would you write for that society?
This thought experiment by John Rawls traces the delicate notion of equality and the human answers and solutions reveal much about our nature and our innate perception of justice and fairness.
If the question was asked without the catch of the uncertainty of your placement in society, it is most understandable that one would choose to craft a society wherein life's circumstances become most fortuitous and in your favour—the aspects of living conditions that exist beyond control will now be under the mercy of your choosing. But it is interesting to note how much consideration an individual might ascribe to the well being of others in such a situation. I believe this depends on the individual themselves. Based on the actions of humans in this world—teeming with malice, the ones who, in their heart, have goodness to humanity might design a society where the atrocities of poverty and subjugation do not exist. Yet, it seems that it is an irrevocable truth that there exists people that would wish the opposite. The reasons for which are varied and perhaps even psychological.
But diving into this aspect reveals whether greed and cruelty is dependent on the limitations of reality. Pivoting to the well conceived idea of humans being products of their environment, if the world was pure then only pureness can be its product or retain some of it in the least. Because humans are erred biologically, the cracks contribute to a wider chasm that will only grow. If all have equal opportunities and are born to a society without vice then perhaps it becomes impossible for it to permeate in a hypothetical world.
But adhering to the essence of the question, with uncertainty at play the most logical option would be to design a world where equality resides in all aspects of necessity: family, wealth, opportunities, dignity and experiences. An immediate contradiction that this thought pulls me to is this—if all belong to the highest echelon in society, does the privilege of elitism fade? This opens up broader questions of contrast. Internally, happiness holds value because that feeling is better in comparison to its counterpart. Humans appreciate what they don't have until they have it. If society lacks brutality then life becomes monotonous in glory. But that cannot deem the existence of cruelty due to a human fallacy.
Ultimately, the goal of a just society behind the veil is not the total eradication of hierarchy, but the sanitization of it. If we accept that human nature requires the contrast of 'highs and lows' to maintain a sense of purpose, then our laws must ensure that the 'low' is never a death sentence or a stripping of fundamental worth. We must design a world that functions like a mountain range rather than a flat plain: there must be peaks to strive for and valleys to rest in, but no bottomless pits. In this society, the 'lows' act not as a site of subjugation, but as a fertile ground for ambition—a starting line that is challenging enough to demand effort, but never so broken that the finish line becomes an impossibility. Justice, then, is not the absence of struggle, but the guarantee that the struggle is fair.