Should we be trying, for instance, to maximize mean happiness, median happiness, total happiness, or something else? Each of these approaches, famously, leaves itself open to pernicious dystopias—such as the civilization of Omelas imagined by writer Ursula K. Le Guin, in which prosperity and harmony abound but a single child is forced to live in abject misery. These are worthy critiques, and Rawls deliberately sidesteps them by leaving open the question of what to do with the information we get from behind the veil.
