If you’re looking for things that you personally can do to scale back the influence/wealth of the powerful (In the US, Russia, China or anywhere else.), AND at the same time increase your own, start with these 5 things:
1) Save at LEAST 10% of all you earn. If you are not saving at least that amount you are no better then a slave living for what your master gives you to eat. (Get yourself a free PDF copy of “The Richest Man in Babylon”: http://horizonspeakers.com/wp-content/uploads/ebooks/the-richest-man-in-babylon.pdf Easiest book you’ll ever read on personal finance and is taught in parable so enjoyable to read as well.)
2) Keep your money in physical form. Either in Gold, Silver or, more pragmatically, physical currency (Remember in the most resent financial panics in the US (2008), Cyprus (2012), Greece (2015), etc. people were trying to get physical cash, not Gold or Silver.). If you must use the banking system only use Credit Unions or Savings and Loans. Keep only as much currency in it as you need for expenses over the course of a couple of weeks or a month tops (Business owners will need more because of tax and logistical reasons.).
3) If you’re a wage slave paying down a lot of debt talk to an attorney about bankruptcy. You are doing your patriotic duty by not repaying banks. Fractional reserve banking is fraud so don’t lose a single nights sleep if you don’t repay another cent of it! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0&list=PLE88E9ICdipidHkTehs1VbFzgwrq1jkUJ&index=4)
4) Speaking of being a wage slave, if you’re getting a refund at the end of the year then you need to change your withholding status so you OWE at the end of the year. Why give the government a free loan for a year while you are paying 100+% from a payday lender?!?! Society trains you to be a slave, that doesn’t mean you actually have to be one!
5) When possible use physical cash when you purchase things. This helps by a) making it hard for the powerful to profile you and add you to their metadata. b) allows those so inclined to reduce the power of government by being “tax neutral”. c) supports the poor by making merchants obligated to accept cash through your free market choice to use currency, as opposed to governments tyrannically passing laws forcing merchants to accept it (https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-starbucks-cashless-plans-could-hurt-poor-unbanked-2018-1).