Have you ever heard of the Veil of Ignorance?
I was listening to Bill Ackman's conversation with Shane Parrish on The Knowledge Project last night and when it came up, I could not believe through all of my schooling I had never learned this framework.
It is the idea that if you were to organize the world, your community, company... to do it not from your current perspective, but from a viewpoint of you not knowing where you'll be born, who you'll be born to, your economic situation, etc.
Fairness is not a top down decision, it is one that has to be made weighing the impact on all stakeholders and not knowing where you'll fall on the spectrum.
This idea altered my perspective on empathy as just "walking in another person's shoes."
Fairness cannot be decided from our current position. Fairness is only genuine when you don’t know your position.