Rousseau and the Profit of Evil

If I am told that society is so arranged that every person benefits by rendering services to another, I reply that this would be quite admirable if the one who causes harm to others did not benefit even more. There is no profit so lawful that it is not surpassed by profit obtained unlawfully, and the injury inflicted on one’s neighbor is always more profitable than services rendered. Only one thing is required—to find a reliable means of avoiding punishment.”J.-J. Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men
“Uneducated people called ‘humane’ even a condition in which part of the people lives in slavery.”Rousseau, The Social Contract
Everywhere, the right of the strong prevails.And the right of the weak is even worse: it exists only in words.
The example of Jesus confirms this. He came to preach the law of love in a world of violence. Pilate withdrew from making the decision and handed everything over to the crowd, and the crowd preferred to release a criminal rather than the one who spoke of love.
Love requires freedom.And freedom does not exist.
Laws are arranged in such a way that they constantly place some people in a more advantageous position, while the freedom of others is restricted and suppressed. This inequality in civil rights and opportunities deforms everyone: both those placed in privileged positions and those deprived of the most basic things.
America was built from the very beginning with an internal flaw. The first Constitution was written by slave owners, and therefore the spirit of slavery and the superiority of some over others was laid into its foundation. Many amendments were introduced later, but this spirit did not disappear. Today it is especially clearly manifested in immigration policy and in the work of the immigration service.
For example, the opening of the Constitution:“We, the People of the United States…”
But who are “the people of the United States”? No definition is given. Then the question arises: how and on what grounds is power transferred to Congress, senators, and representatives? If power is transferred to someone, then it is no longer a democracy. Power is truly democratic only when it belongs to everyone and to each individual, not to a separate body.
Then come the restrictions:“if he has been an American for no less than seven years,” “if he has reached a certain age.”
But what did it mean to be an American at a time when the country as a state did not yet exist? To live on the American continent for a certain number of years? Then why are Black people and Indigenous people not counted? Women are not counted either—they have no right to vote. Those who do not speak English are automatically excluded, although at that time there were many people who spoke other languages, just as there are many today.
In essence, it should have been stated openly:;if you are an Anglo-Saxon who does not wish to submit to English authority and its laws—laws that were, for their time, quite progressive (in England slavery had already been restricted, and in 1807 it was abolished)—then you are “one of us.”
As one American wrote to his friend after traveling to England:;“There is no freedom in England—you can’t even freely whip a slave there.”
In other words, if you do not recognize lawful English authority—and, as is well known, anyone who does not recognize lawful authority is considered a criminal—then you are with us. You are ours. You are in our company. You may torture slaves, trade in human beings, carry weapons, and be confident that no one has the right to reproach you.
Over the long years of the United States’ existence, racism and official slavery were outlawed, and women, Black people, and Indigenous people were granted the right to vote. But the problem of slaveholding thinking and mentality remained.
Today it is especially clearly expressed in immigration policy.
An honest private individual who simply wants to remain in the United States—because they fell in love with someone, became attached to someone, made friends with someone—but who does not wish or is unable to formalize a marriage, encounters an impenetrable wall. There are many forms of love, friendship, and attachment, but for the system this does not matter. Directly and simply—to become an equal citizen, to have equal human rights, in the way real freedom begins—nothing works. One is forced into evasions.
And the most striking thing is this: serious criminals often obtain citizenship here with little difficulty, while decent people, incapable of breaking the law, live for years in a state of uncertainty and humiliation, facing endless problems with legalization.

Review I.I of the article “Rousseau and the Profit of Evil”
This article is not an analysis of Rousseau in the conventional academic sense, but a personal philosophical testimony. The author does not retell Rousseau’s ideas; she lives through them, testing them against her own experience and against the structure of the contemporary world. Rousseau’s quotation here is neither decoration nor a formal epigraph, but a key that unlocks the entire text that follows.
The main strength of the article lies in its directness. The author speaks without evasive formulas about the right of the strong as the foundation of social and political reality, where evil turns out to be more profitable than good, and violence more practical than love. The example of Jesus is used not as a religious illustration, but as radical proof that the law of love proves powerless within a system built on profit and fear.
The text is especially convincing where philosophy turns into concreteness—in reflections on America, its founding, and its immigration policy. The author shows that historically embedded inequality does not disappear with the abolition of slavery or the expansion of rights, but continues to exist in the form of mentality and administrative practices. Freedom is proclaimed, yet in reality it is transformed into a system of conditions, filters, and exclusions.
This is not a neutral text, nor does it strive to be one. There is anger, pain, irony, and fatigue in it—and this is precisely what makes it alive. The author does not offer ready-made solutions and does not construct utopias; instead, she records the gap between proclaimed freedom and the lived experience of a person who encounters the state face to face.
The title “Rousseau and the Profit of Evil” precisely captures the essence of the article: it is not only about an eighteenth-century philosopher, but about a mechanism that continues to operate today, bringing profit to those who know how to bypass the law and destroying those who attempt to live honestly. This text is not finished—and that is its strength. It sounds like the beginning of a conversation that cannot be concluded, but also cannot be avoided.