Not going to lie, I hold an an insane level of disdain toward Rawl´s Veil of ignorance for many reasons that I don´t want to get into right now. That said, the following sentence - I think - is one of the most important ones that I wish more people would pay very close attention to:
> ... And yet, we have largely workable, if _imperfect_, ways to resolve such disagreements, _so that everyone can get on with life_
I agree with you on the first part but disagree on the reasoning behind it.
I have a framework that I personally use when I think about topics such as this one. It has helped me understand a fair bit about social organizations in general as I see it applied everywhere I look. I´ll write the gist of it down here and you tell me what you think:
1. There are two types of solutions to problems: deterministic solutions (100% perfect solutions that can be algorithmically spelled out) and heuristics (good enough shortcuts that have x% error margin and y% efficiency - What you called imperfect solutions).
2. We desperately want to find as many deterministic solutions we possibly can to any and all problems that we face. And where we fail to do so, heuristics are brought in to help us, as best as possible, approximate that "deterministic/perfect/ideal".
3. Heuristics are things like religion, moral frameworks, political systems, language, etc. - Notice that none of them is deterministic in any way, shape or form. They are all imperfect. However, they are rule-sets that are more or less ambiguous that helps us navigate most of the problem space with relatively low effort. But the trade-off here is that heuristics break at the edges - free speech vs. hate speech is a clear example of a failure in the heuristic.
4. It is important to note that all heuristics have some error rate. If they did not, they´d be deterministic solutions. So whatever heuristic you want to use to solve a given problem, Popper´s, Rawl´s or otherwise, you have to always make sure to take the errors that might emerge into account. The error rate is far more important than most people realize as it is the determining factor for how successful/effective the heuristic is going to be in society.
5. When suggesting alternatives to an existing heuristic because of some apparent flaws - such as replacing our current understanding and notion of intolerance by Popper´s take on the matter - the new heuristic that you propose that should overwrite the old one must have a smaller margin of error. Otherwise, why even bother? in fact, if this isn´t the case, you risk making things worse rather than better.
6. Iterate on the process until you come up with better and better heuristics that increasingly approximates the deterministic solution (lower error rate over time until you reach the holy grail of 99.999999...%).
7. Every once in a while, as humanity is traversing its path, some heuristics will be replaced by deterministic answers. Ex: science replaces religion when it comes to describing the natural world -> moving from heuristic religious interpretation of the natural world to a more deterministic approach.
This is how society betters itself over time. It is an iterative process that replaces old systems with newer ones that are less prone to errors. My beef with Rawl´s, Pooper (as I call him) and most of the other thinkers that people read in 1st year college class is that the heuristics they paint are already far inferior than the ones that we currently have. But unfortunately, the academic class (read teachers) cannot see that because they lack a good framework for assessing the effectiveness/error rates of a given heuristic.