The big difference between an agorist and an anarcho-capitalist as far as I am concerned is rooted in action.  One talks a lot about how things ought to be, the other actually tries to live what they feel the world should be like, in spite of the system in which we are all forced to live.  It’s up to the individual agorist to make personal risk assessments and determine how much they’re willing to risk to live freely.  Some risk more than others, myself included.

Recently, I wrote another article that discusses the difference more, for those who are interested.  To summarize, it was inspired by someone who talked the talk of an agorist but didn’t call himself one: an ice cream store owner who, by winter, was an expat in China for more than 20 years.  While he did opt out of the system, he was also pretty above board at least as far as I knew.  Today’s post is about the other side of the spectrum, the more extreme agorist that was my very own Mother.

At points, my Dad was pretty agorist, too, but there were also huge chunks of my childhood where he had regular jobs, paying taxes.  My Mom ,however, was an agorist through and through, even though I don’t really remember her clinging to anything that you could call a “political ideal.” She just wanted to do what she wanted and be left the fuck alone.  The only regular jobs I ever remember her working were in fast food and those were short lived, just in the last years before she died.  Everything else was hustled.

Mom was known for two things, her drugs and her plants.  She always had an affinity for drugs, partially because she was likely an undiagnosed autistic trying to make herself just a little less sensitive to this often harsh world, one that clearly did not understand her.  She very early on got involved in drug sales to pay for her drug usage.

She also had a green thumb like literally no one I’ve ever known.  To this day, she is known as the family member who would jump out of moving vehicles, pruning shears in hand, to go after rare plants she wanted to steal for her garden.  She was not above taking pieces of plants out of personal gardens, government gardens, or even drive through areas at fast food places.   There was literally no place we could go where Mom wasn’t trying to get something to add to her garden.  She carried around pruning shears and a baggie with a wet paper towel in it, so she was always prepared. Some of the things she’d take were finicky, and if she didn’t have something wet to put around them, they’d dry before we got home and be useless.

And we even went on several day long adventures when I was a kid, driving around looking at public gardens for varieties she didn’t yet have.  We’d pull over, she’d jump out and snip what she needed, and we’d drive away, sometimes with people looking at us like, “What just happened?!” Sometimes we’d also garbage pick at the same time, basically anything that seemed useful to us.  We never much got into hustling those items though, but we probably should have.

And then she’d get home, plant the cuttings, and get them to root. Then she’d grow them, clone the shit out of them, and start selling them at local markets.  She had this blue bus for most of my childhood, a repurposed short bus she bought from the Amish. She’d load that thing up every weekend and stick us kids in there to help with plants on our laps.  She could also be commissioned to do the landscaping on someone’s property; she’d show up in her bus filled with the plants and a plan for placing them.

Most kids had a backyard where they could play.  I, too, had a large back yard for most of my childhood but it was literally always filled end-to-end with plants.  There would be thin rows for walking and that was it.  I remember distinctly at one house playing in the compost bin because that was literally the only spot I could find that didn’t have plastic pots.

This backyard sometimes would pose a problem with the neighbors who hated the sight of it.  My Mom wasn’t dumb enough to grow weed in the open like that, but she did have the police called on her for a plant with a similar leaf structure once.  When the cops arrived and saw her back yard, they realized the truth.  To be clear,  my Mom definitely grew weed, just not there.

My earliest memories of her working in a greenhouse with plants were first at my Grandmother’s greenhouse. They sold house plants to the public in the 1980s and 90s. That’s where my Mom got her love of plants and understanding of business.  I’d spend my days adventuring around the property looking at everything. I was fascinated by the large machinery they had for mixing soil.  My Mom would spend her days cloning, repotting, and rearranging plants. She would also do the sales.

Later, she opened her own greenhouse but in a different city.  I did end up finding photos of her in that greenhouse, with a big pot plant; so, there were things in that greenhouse that were going on that I had no idea about.  I remember it being mostly empty, but I also remember there was a rule where we couldn’t really wander around the inside of the place. We had like a designated after school area with snacks and an antenna TV that we were confined to while she was working.  At that time, I think I was 5 or 6 years old. She rented that greenhouse for less than a year.

Through all of this, she was evidently selling drugs and evading the law.  I had a hunch of something like that considering all the visitors she received, and the fact that she didn’t work a job; but I was young, less than 10, when she got arrested and everything came out into the open.

At the time, I had an understanding of what drugs were but I really didn’t even understand that they were illegal.  Mom had trained us to know the knock of the police and to hide from them, but she never explained why until she was arrested. I had this somewhat irrational fear of police at all times. As far as I knew, they were terrorists trying to steal my Mom away from me for no good reason.

As I began to understand the illegality of my Mom’s lifestyle, I started to refine my dislike towards police and the state in general.  I’m not sure that those cops realized they were essentially making intelligent anarchists with their antics.

Oddly enough, the only victim ever stated in her charges was just the state in which we resided.  What she was doing was illegal, yes, but I can’t say she was hurting anyone other than maybe us kids in the form of neglect. Even she tells me she primarily sold weed and the other drugs were basically reserved for her personal use. When I asked why she didn’t sell other drugs like meth, she told me she couldn’t deal with the addicts.

In reality, she was using the drug business to bankroll her extensive hosta collection (her favorite part of her garden, and if we’re talking in autism terms, her true “special interest”), her personal drug needs and not much else.  The thing was, she broke the one rule of drug dealing, don’t get high on your own supply.  As a result there wasn’t much money left over for anything else, and that included food.

From what I can tell, a big part of why my Mom ended up in the tough situations she did was because of lack of information and understanding.  She had no Internet access like we do these days and there were a lot of things going on with her both physically and psychologically to where she needed support, and she didn’t get it. The only support she found was in drugs.

For me, for most of my life she was simply a cautionary tale. It was watching my Mom’s struggles and antics that sent me into college trying to pursue an “normal” lifestyle.

Here’s the thing about being raised as an agorist though…at a certain point, when trying to do the “normal” thing, you just can’t anymore.  It becomes so uncomfortable, you can’t stand it.  And then you break free.

I have my Mom’s drive to hustle, but that’s combined with having read the works of Konkin.  That’s with having intelligently thought about which risks I’ve been willing to take. And as anyone who follows my story knows, I’ve taken some fucking risks, but none of them were without thought. Without intention.

So, as I look back on the story of my Mom as an adult, now somewhat far removed from the traumas she created within my life, I can have a level of respect.  If there’s one thing my mom taught me, it’s the beauty of hustling with your own skills. She did a lot more than even mentioned in this article in collaboration with her agorist friends, but I could realistically write a whole book about all of that.