I first discovered my agorist tendencies in college, but until recently, I never really understood WHY agorism made so much sense to me, why it was so natural when for so many it’s something hard.  If there’s one thing I’ve encountered over the years, its a lot of people talking the talk without walking the walk.  For them, agorism is just a goal to be attained eventually, not something you actually go for now.

And I get it, being a free person in an unfree world is not without its risks. I personally have faced both loss of life and freedom because of my commitment to this lifestyle. But something I’ve noticed is that for some of us agorists, this isn’t something we choose, it’s something we do by necessity.

I thought it was a product of my agorist childhood.  Both parents were agorists without understanding the concept behind it.  They made money off their assorted skills to get by, often working tax free or doing straight up illegal things to get by.  My mom spent 6 years of my childhood on the run from the government, so you think that’d be the main reason I pursued what was basically an outlaw lifestyle.  Turns out, its a lot deeper than that.  My parents did it because they couldn’t live any other way, and for me, it’s kind of the same.

The last year or so, I’ve done a lot of research into Autism and what I’ve found is that the reason I committed myself to agorism the way that I did is because it is PERFECT for the neurodiverse.   For one, it’s highly tailor-able to the individual as the main point is to just participate in the counter-economy in voluntary interactions only.

For the sake of this post, neurodiversity is a somewhat general term that includes the following neurotypes within it: OCD, ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism and more. I call them neurotypes instead of disorders because as far as I’m concerned, they’re only disorders when you try to stuff them into situations unnatural for them.

It’s often a joke that the majority of libertarian types are “somewhere on the spectrum,” but as I have learned more about autism for myself, I have started to understand my community more; and I’m beginning to see that there’s actually a lot of truth in it, especially for hardcore committed agorists.

For one, part of being autistic is dealing with something called pathological demand avoidance.  It basically means that when people tell us to do anything, we resist.  Doesn’t matter if it’s something I planned on doing, if you tell me to do it, part of me will say NO at least at the start. It’s in our nature and its somewhat uncontrollable.  For many agorists I know, this lifestyle is a way of life because we can’t tolerate ANY control. That’s just the way it is.

But beyond that, something I’ve learned (at least for me personally) is part of the reason I am an agorist is because I do not fit into the neurotypical working life paradigm.  Not only do I deal with autism but ADHD.  This basically means I have a hard time focusing on ANYTHING for more than a half hour to an hour at most.  Even crochet, I multitask while I do that, otherwise I get bored.

So, the idea of working in one subject for the rest of my life is virtual torture.  It doesn’t matter how much I like something, I NEED other things to switch back and forth between or my mental health suffers.

The thing is, this makes me an extremely well rounded and productive person.  Not sure I’d call that a disorder, would you? But that’s just me, a neurodiverse human in her natural environment hustling the day away.

And something I’m finding as I talk with my friends who I consider “most agorist”, a lot but not all have strong neurodiverse tendencies.  An inability to bullshit, I call it.

For example, something to consider is that many agorists have a wide array of interests.  And no two agorists are alike.  So, you’ll have one guy that does breath work and sells kratom and does interviews.  Some are just straight up obsessed with cryptocurrency and are agorist developers getting paid in Bitcoin.  And another who crochets, does graphic design, podcast editing…wait, that’s me.

You get the idea.

Often, I find the people living the agorist lifestyle often do so because our brains work in a way to where we are intolerant of being told what to do.  For some, it just simply manifests as becoming your own boss, or working as a contractor.  For those of us with ADHD, we end up with like 16 small side hustles that make up our total income.

I bring this up, because when I found agorism I felt like I was drowning.  I had just really woken up to the state of the world.  During my childhood, I kept my nose in fictional books to avoid the crazy state of the world because my personal world was so crazy.  As an adult, I realized it is much bigger than that.

Beyond that, I was facing having to choose one thing to do for the rest of my life.  I literally switched majors 3 times in 1.5 years that I was in college because of this, frantic over having to shove myself into the status quo.

But then I found agorism and I started experimenting with side hustles immediately. The relief that came with agorism, despite the fact that it can be an uncertain lifestyle, is, I think, actually rooted in my neurodiversity.  The need to do many cool things, not just one.

As far as I am concerned, agorism is really the only working philosophy that caters to the neurodiverse.  The whole idea is to learn to monetize everything you do in a way that supports the counter-economy, not the state.

So, for those of us who literally cannot tolerate control, agorism is the way out. We learn about grey markets, privacy, cryptocurrency.  The aspects about all of these things for me personally is the fact that the control lies in my hands, it’s up to me how I do things.

If you’re neurodiverse and you try and shove yourself into a box in which you cannot fit, you will become sick, and this I know from personal experience.  And this sickness is often both mental and physical. I’m fully of the belief that neurodiversity is only a disorder when we try to deny those fundamental parts of our nature.

That part of you that just can’t stick to one job for no reason other than boredom…The part of you that can’t seem to work for anyone because you can’t tolerate being told what to do, even if someone’s paying you for it…The person who didn’t finish college not because they were stupid, but because the idea of choosing only one thing made them sick.

Maybe that’s just how your brain is…Maybe there’s nothing with it. And maybe, if you’re like me, it’s your super power.