Lots of countries in Europe have nothing remotely resembling the US credit scoring system and people there obviously live comfortable, modern lives and have access to financial services.
So far, I have had a credit check done once. It was done
by me voluntarily, to unlock additional functionality (receiving the purchase before the payment gets cleared), with my explicit consent ("checking your credit involves transmitting the following data to xyz") and had a link to a form I could use to request the data they had on me from the credit rating agency (via post). Very different experience from what it sounds like people in the US have.