The question is how you view the world. Are we in a police state when every word spoken, written, and typed is archived and analyzed for possible terrorist threats?

Furthermore could one say that we are willing participants of our own oppression? How many of you hold jobs you hate to pay debt you have? Heck, let's set aside those individuals that over spent. What about a mortgage, educational , and/or vehicle loans? Medical expenses? It's easy to enslave a populace that doesn't think it's enslaved. If we're all beholden to corporations is this any different than a serfdom?

Speaking to the capitalism serfdom, if money is power, and power drives change in the US (and world wide, let's not kid ourselves), exactly how do the people stand up to corporations who lobby governments and bend laws to their will? Why can't we have hemp? It lacks THC, it's a proven strong, reliable, and renewable fiber. What about renewable energy? Why are the oil companies fighting change? If money was diverted away from oil industry we could accomplish a near oil free society. And what about subsided agriculture? The US produces ~60% of the worlds corn, more than half of that isn't edible by humans. It's used for stock feed and through a series of chemical processes broken down into other food additives. As tax payers we're paying so agribusiness can have cheap inputs to output cheap products.

I'm pretty sure I'm coming off as a liberal hippy, I'm not. There is money to be made in moving away from any of these finite/limiting technologies. My point is that because we've allowed corporations to dictate law we've allowed them to become our rulers and we don't even see it. We've allowed them to take spliced sections of genome and patent them. We've allowed them to say that digital copies affect their bottom line by a 100:1 ratio. We've allowed them to say that renewable energy sources and technologies aren't feasible and we've allowed them to say that our voice doesn't matter.

Think about the state of the world, not just the US. Multinational conglomerates influence the economy and government the world over. In South American the Coca Cola company invests in and supports bottling "franchises" (which is way of legally separating the two entities). These franchises nearly enslave the local people, destroy their economies and if they try to rise up and union? They have mysterious accidents. What about the slave workforce's used to make clothing or our electronics? Corporations exist without any nationality and are beholden only to their investors. If they're breaking the law they only act when they're caught, and even then they just lobby to change the laws.

I could rant on forever and provide example after example. We live in a near police state in the US because we've allowed corporations to make profits off war and violence. We've allowed them to keep most of the population in a state of fear and then profited off that fear. It's not our government we need to take our freedoms away from, it's our true rulers.

Note: I believe in capitalism, but as in all things there must be a balance. We can't live in a extreme environment. Any direction of extremism is bad for all.