I believe you are correct. Most people do not understand, that freedom comes from within. Surprisingly even most anarchists do not understand that. (in my experience) Or maybe they don't understand the implications of it. (for instance the impossibility of forcing people to be free, to want to be free)

I don't think that the covid mania was (still kinda is) specific to NZ. I saw it pretty much across the entire developed world. If you said CZ instead of NZ, it would apply to a letter to my home country of Czechia.

On the financial note, I am bit hesitant to agree. Unless there is something I am missing, struggling to make ends meet does not, imho, reduce freedom. It reduces luxury. I believe I am as free now, that I make over 2x the national average, as I was when I was homeless and literally begged for food money. Both inregard to the outer and inner freedom.

In fact I dare to say, that even people who struggle to make ends meet today still have a more luxurious lives than literal kings just a couple hundred years ago. (at least in developed countries)

I suspect the problem is of cognitive rsther than economic nature. What I mean is that in absolute terms, even the lower income classes have way more than we actually need, but we see, that other people have even way more than we do. The problem IMO is that we too often consider relative wealth, not absolute wealth. That pushes us to imitate lifestyles of those who have more than us, to compare ourselves to them instead of comparing our needs to what we already have now and what we possibly can have in the future.