I very recently moved from one part of Australia to another, and, while it was still apparent where I was before, it is much, much more apparent in the new city just how successful "Covid" was at transferring wealth from the bottom end to the top end.
Almost everything here is cashless, including fucking vending machines (so you can't get change) and public transport (which must now always be prepaid). The suburb I am in has lost the majority of its small businesses, which either sold up and flogged off their assets, or are in the process of doing so. These "vacant" sites are then being replaced by towers. Expensive, shiny, poorly-built towers, financed almost solely by Chinese money.
I also just had someone overcharge me massively for what the products she was on-selling are worth, only to say "Covid" as the justification (in reality, lack of competition in the immediate area is the real reason). She also justified "Covid" for why I can't get a fucking electrician to come fix something in my apartment (a fridge - long story)...
Covid, Covid, fucking Covid. Or if it's not that, it's "security" or "sustainability". Like my University cutting back on services, staff, facilities, and even teaching (I study and work in Science, right. They've cut field trips, because the lecturers can't be effed. Meaning one of the only really useful areas of my courses are now gone)... You now even need to apply for "special permission" to use the library after hours, which you have to "justify" by carrying the "permission" around with you on a brand new, specialised app...
I realise Australia may be a fairly extreme outlier, on certain things (never mind that the building I am staying in is owned by a Hong Kong shell company, and all the writing on signs is in Chinese. And never mind the fact that the University is utterly compliant to the Chinese, too), but still, this all feels very... Off. Most of my friends seem able to see it, too, to some extent (though some of them blame it on everything from "racism" to "teh patriarchay!" to "capitalism"), and even the local subreddits seem to be waking up to it...
So yeah, while "Agenda 2030" may not be a reality yet, I really do think that "our leaders" are 100% committed to it, as is much of the business community... It's happening, and unless people really do start to push back, I do think that's where we're headed. We shouldn't bury our heads in the sand about that fact.
/endrant
That's cool and worthy, what kind of science?
Tell us about the cash use situation; how restrictive is it? In your daily life do you make an effort to use cash wherever possible? When they are able to eradicate the use of cash your cage becomes inescapable.
If you remember about 2010 in Greece the European Central Bank turned off cash in Greece for months which created payment chaos as many people and businesses were still predominately dependent on cash transactions, forcing them into digital money or no money. A barter economy also sprung up pretty fast but Greece still had a healthy agricultural and artisan factor in which to barter.
Can you turn your science education into something that can be bartered in hard times? Otherwise as an urban Australian you will be eventually forced into their electronic money system and there will be no way out but starvation.
Leave your cell phone at home for a couple of days and try to live without it, just as an experiment.
I leave my cell phone at "home" (currently not really a home, but where I'm living) all the time, but the University has made it so you can't access their systems without it... So I can't go to class without it, or the library, or, well, access anything to do with my studies... :-/
And yes, I do try to use cash whenever possible, which is why being told that you can't top up your travel card with cash (yes, really), and can't even use vending machines was so fucked...
Even three years ago, you could still at least use cash (coins) on buses. No more...
A lot of businesses refuse it, now, too...
But yeah, obviously I do try. Wherever possible, still, lol...
Oh, and re the bartering thing...
Honestly no, my education has not really helped much for that, apart from, I guess, knowing how to use certain natural "products" - animals, plants, etc, for their useful purposes...
But nah, I guess in that sense, knowing how to grow and harvest my own food, and fuck, knowing how to change a tyre and all that basic mechanical shit, will probably be more useful, if we ever got to that point...
But I doubt I would even live that long anyway, lol, so for my own personal survival? Not really worried. Ha.