I've been thinking about the idea of 'freedom' a lot over the past few months.
I think the part that a lot of my, "dude, you've overreacting to all of this" friends are missing... is the part where the 'comfortable prisons' we have today (cubicles, Neflix, Spotify, Doordash, etc) are voluntary.... vs a lot of these upcoming prisons which are going to be involuntary and forced upon us with no way to opt-out.
Right now, you can choose to take the desk job, drive into work, sit in the cubicle and clap along when you get your pizza party or Dunkin Donuts/Starbucks coffee perk.... or, you can choose to decline that job and drive to a construction site or a retail store and stand on your feet all day moving around and working that job. Going to college vs learning a trade vs retail is a choice. There's pros and cons for any of them, but you can weight it out and pick your path.
Same deal with Doordash and other convenience based apps. You can use them... or, you can hop in your car and drive to the place and pick up the order yourself, or, have a sit-down meal. It's a choice if you want to pay to have increased convenience or not.
Even the tollway out here... everyone hates the tollway (myself included), but you don't NEED to use the tollway. You can get to literally any public destination in Chicago without using a tollway. It will oftentimes take you longer, sometimes significantly longer, but you can still get to your destination.
That logic applies to the vast majority of current 'prisons' that many people complain about.
(I'll admit that cell phones are kind of a gray area... you could argue you don't NEED one, but good luck trying to get a job without a cell phone number that you list on the job application. There are other gray areas as well.)
When it comes to Flock cameras and gigantic data centers and facial recognition running in public areas... you don't really have a choice. You can stop driving, but in order to fully participate in society you need to be able get from one place to another. Give up your car because you hate license plate readers, yes that's a choice. Not being able to go to the public library because you don't feel like having your biometric data run? That's much less of a choice, and that's where we're headed.
For all the, "if you don't like it you shouldn't have voted for it" crowd... I didn't. I literally volunteered my time and effort to trying to get candidates who pledged to vote against these things elected to local office, they all lost. So it is what it is but you have to realize that this isn't a will of the people thing. This is a byproduct of megacorps controlling government and policy.
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