>"Just don't ask about the money - they won't like that."

The name of the game.  Or is it the game of the name?  Whatever it is, we are only subject to it by our volition, not even just our consent.  We have to deliberately use it to make it work, and because of that requirement folks that intend to produce themselves needful goods and services to exchange with others that do, or to mutually aid and assist one another as they see fit, will, if suitably embarked on that process in a timely way (before the SHTF), proceed to succeed through any cataclysm of psychologically induced panic or terror.

Since, as has been demonstrated by the scamdemic, an actual catastrophe like a plague would endanger the wealthy right along with the poor, whatever doom is being prepared to fell global society is certain to be pure propaganda, a simulated ersatz cataclysm that is not an actual unsurvivable hazard, rational and well situated folks should survive in droves by simply not panicking and leaping off the cliff with the rest of the lemmings.  The potential of coordination across recent psyops, ayliums, AGI, robots gone rogue, etc., suggests to me that transhumanism may seduce the indolent and arrogant into uploading themselves and leaving their meat husks behind.  Pretty sure there's a substantial number of people that have been so demoralized that would jump right into such a dumpster fire without a second thought, or rational opinion. The numbers reported for the Canadian MAID suicide program certainly indicate a significant number of Canadians would rather die than suffer a toothache (although putting non compos mentus people to death by that means is just murder, IMHO).  If a few pretty lights on a control panel and voice recordings were tacked onto suicide pods, I am confident a lot of people would believe and jump right in.

Folks with their feet on the grass will have no interest.  Given the nascent attainment of power to produce promised by automation, decentralization, and the advent of space travel, folks even moderately aware of our potential felicity in the here and now just a few years hence are going to diligently merit their almost unimaginable prosperity, and that of their posterity, as these technologies continue to roll out across the population.  The fear mongering propaganda will, again, be revealed to be mere Machiavellian manipulation, and I am certain sure those at the forefront of the wave of early adoption will be absolutely free in less than a century.  

Even without new inventions extant means of creating personal empires amongst the stars merely require time and engineering today to enable people to seize their destinies and deliver to their posterity such paradise.  One advance that strikes me as wholly underappreciated is the recent discovery that ordinary cement doped with plain old lamp black creates a supercapacitor that can be used as a foundation for a structure, such as a personal home.  Since houses already have foundations of cement, new construction can incorporate energy storage sufficient for that home to enable whatever means of producing power are suitable on that site to supply all the electrical needs of a modern home - without any additional expense in construction of the home.  I just don't think people have realized what an incredible freedom and reduction in expense this creates going forward.  There are dozens more recent advances that can be concatenated with that free energy storage solution to create economic independence and eliminate dependence - and vulnerability - from overlords.

Money is an evil institution, as you say, and actual economic activity really has nothing to do with it, as the above supercapacitor reveals by delivering an economic service that costs no money to produce, but were you to purchase an equivalent service from Tesla, for example, using lithium batteries, would cost a fortune in slave coupons...er, dollars.  The prospect of adopting the multiplicity of novel means of production recently advented creating such economic wealth without involving money is portentous of felicity unimaginable to folks that haven't given it thought.

As much as they don't like us asking about the money, they will like even less our prosperity while completely ignoring it.  They can benefit from our devotion, and even depend on our hatred, but they cannot from being ignored.  If we can effect our security from their weapons, all we have to do is prosper and ignore them until they go away.