> more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom My experience of the US is similar to yours. Note that the USA is rather special in how it encodes freedom. Th

> more of a pseudo freedom than actual freedom My experience of the US is similar to yours. Note that the USA is rather special in how it encodes freedom. There is, after all, literally a big list of guaranteed freedoms. In practice, if something's not on there, then every government and quasi-governmental entity assumes you are not free to do it, or at least, they believe they can decide to stop you. This is the inverse of almost every construction of freedom that went before it, and your experience arises from that difference. The notoriously vast & byzantine scale of the US Code is another emergent property, it being essentially a salami attack on its own fundamentals.