Agriculture, Greed, and Rousseau’s Pipe Dream: When Solutions Turn Into New Problems

By Maurice Quentin de La Tour – Unknown source, Public Domain,

Rousseau had a vision, didn’t he?

A world where people lived without the weight of property, without the chains of civilization—just a bunch of noble savages wandering the woods, living off the land, doing whatever the hell they pleased.

Well, that was the dream, at least.

The problem? It was a fantasy, a pipe dream—a romantic little tale for those too drunk on idealism to see the mess that would follow.

I’m a middle-aged philosophy student, disillusioned, just like the rest of us.

I spent five years writing copy for whatever company needed me, trying to sell things I didn’t always believe in. And here I am, trying to make sense of Rousseau, as if somehow the answer is buried in the pages of books that only make you more miserable.

He wrote that inequality began the moment someone said, “This is mine.”

Well, yeah, Rousseau, but the problem wasn’t property—it was the human brain.

We figured out how to eat, sure. But we also figured out how to keep everything for ourselves, how to guard what we thought was ours.

So, congratulations. You solved one problem and created a thousand new ones.

Agriculture gave us food, and greed gave us hell.

The Pipe Dream of Equality

Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality paints a pretty picture.

People living in the state of nature, free, happy, unburdened by all the crap we’ve come to cherish in modern society—property, laws, social order.

They didn’t have much, but that was the point. They were content with what they had, or at least that’s how Rousseau imagined it.

The second someone figured out the concept of ownership, everything went to hell.

But here’s the real slap: Rousseau’s theory is a nice bedtime story, but the world doesn’t play by those rules.

The second we figured out how to grow our own food, how to stockpile it for winter, we also figured out how to hold onto it.

Property became something you didn’t share, and that was the real problem.

It didn’t matter if you had ten acres or one. It’s all the same when greed gets involved.

The second we could say, “This is mine,” we also said, “This is mine, and I’ll protect it with everything I’ve got.”

And that, my friends, is where inequality begins.

Photo by Christine Roy on Unsplash

Technology and Greed: From Tools to Tyranny

Let’s talk about technology. Or rather, let’s talk about the lie we call “progress.”

Technology is supposed to solve problems, right? That’s what we tell ourselves. A wise man once said technology is “a solution to a problem,” and I suppose that’s true. But then again, it also gave us a thousand new problems we didn’t know we had.

Agriculture was the first tool we used to make life easier.

And it did—at first. We could grow food. We could stop wandering the earth like aimless animals.

But with the plow came the first weapon—property.

Once we figured out how to plant crops, we had to figure out how to protect them.

Once we figured out how to grow more food, we needed more land.

Once we needed more land, we needed more power.

And here we are, all of us, running in circles trying to get what we don’t need.

It’s like a never-ending game of Monopoly where no one ever gets to pass “Go” without selling their soul.

Photo by Pilar Rubio on Unsplash

Explaining It to an Apprentice With a Stubborn Brain

Imagine you’re in a playground.

At first, everyone shares their toys. It’s simple, everyone’s happy.

But then one kid gets a toy that’s cooler than the rest.

He doesn’t want to share. He says, “This is mine.”

Now, what happens? The other kids want it too.

They fight. They argue. Now no one’s sharing. The kid with the cool toy keeps it for himself, and soon, everyone has their own toys, and no one trusts each other.

That’s how it starts.

Before we had anything, we had nothing to fight over.

But once someone decided they wanted something for themselves, the whole system broke down.

And now, instead of playing, everyone’s just worrying about keeping their toys safe.

The Voices Against Rousseau

There are those who can’t stand Rousseau’s idealism.

They’re the ones who look at his vision of equality and laugh. I’m one of them, I think.

Take Petr Kropotkin, who argued in Mutual Aid that humans didn’t become civilized by hoarding land or hoarding food.

No, he said, we thrived because we helped each other.

Cooperation, not competition, was the key.

You also have Karl Marx, who didn’t really buy Rousseau’s story.

Marx said inequality wasn’t caused by property—it was caused by class struggle.

When you divide labor and create systems that concentrate wealth, inequality follows.

Property might be a problem, but it’s not the root of the problem.

The real issue is the system that creates these divides in the first place.

Key Thinkers on Inequality

ThinkerOpposes Rousseau’s View
RousseauInequality begins with the concept of ownership.
KropotkinCooperation, not competition, is the foundation of civilization.
PinkerClaims that the rise of civilization has made things better.
MarxInequality arises from economic and class struggle.

Problems Caused by Agriculture

ProblemExampleImpact on Society
Property AccumulationLand ownership, wealth concentrationLeads to inequality and social divisions
Technological GrowthIrrigation, plows, farming equipmentAmplifies greed, creates power imbalances
Hierarchical StructuresRise of social elites, rulers, landlordsInequality, oppression, and class conflict

Analyzing Some Key Quotes

I am about to decipher some key quotes from Rousseau as a little bird told me that my readers (all 3 of them) really like those article sections, and my editor (that weirdo CodyTS) is now insisting I do it.

So, here we go, fellas.

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Explanation:

Rousseau’s talking about the truth nobody wants to hear.

You’re born into this world wide open, no chains, no bullshit. But the moment you start growing, the world slaps a collar around your neck—parents, schools, jobs, the whole damn circus.

They tell you what to do, how to think, who you should be.

And you? You’re just trying to survive, trying to find something real. But you’re shackled. Not by iron, but by all the things you’re supposed to want, supposed to be.

You were born free, but the world doesn’t give a damn. It’ll lock you down before you even know what’s happening.

“I can discover nothing in any mere animal but an ingenious machine, to which nature has given senses to wind itself up, and guard, to a certain degree, against everything that might destroy or disorder it.”

― Jean Jacques RousseauA Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation of the Inequality Among Mankind

Explanation:

Alright, picture this: you’re a little robot, right? You don’t know much about the world, but you’ve got these senses—eyes, ears, whatever—to figure out what keeps you ticking. You get hungry, you eat.

You get tired, you sleep. You run into trouble, you fight back, try to survive. It’s like your body’s got a built-in guide on how to keep you going, how to keep you from falling apart. That’s what Rousseau’s saying.

Animals, humans—they’re just machines with instincts, wired to survive, do the basic stuff, like eating or avoiding danger. They’re not thinking about saving the world or inventing anything crazy. They’re just trying to keep the gears running.

Nature gave them the tools to keep them going, to keep everything from falling apart. That’s all. No deep philosophy, just survival.

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying ‘this is mine’, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”

― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Explanation:

Some guy, one day, just decides a patch of dirt is his. No one’s told him it’s his, no one’s given him permission. But somehow, he convinces a bunch of fools to buy into it.

And boom—civilization is born. That’s where the chains start. One dude takes a piece of land, calls it his, and the next thing you know, everyone’s scrambling to grab their own little chunk.

The idea of ownership starts, and with it, everything goes South—greed, inequality, you name it.

People believe the lie, and now we’re all stuck in this loop, fighting over stuff that was never really ours to begin with.

Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash

Final Words For Those Still Reading…

So here we are, stuck in this beautiful trainwreck .

Rousseau’s noble savage isn’t coming to save us, and the dream of equality is just that—a dream.

The world doesn’t give a damn about your philosophy or your ideals.

We live in a system that thrives on inequality, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

It’s a cycle that feeds itself, and the rest of us are just along for the ride.

Maybe the point is that it’s too late to fix things.

Maybe the only thing we can do is accept that we’re all just waiting to die, struggling to find meaning in a world that never gave us a chance.

As Nietzsche said, “He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster.”

We’re all fighting, aren’t we? And in the end, we’re the monsters.

But there’s still a choice, even if it feels like a hollow one.

We might be stuck, but we’re not without agency.

We can still choose how we live, how we treat each other, and maybe—just maybe—how we might avoid completely sinking into the abyss.

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