I can vote for Parliament I can't vote for PayPal's board of directors.
Most politicians back it, so voting differently makes little difference. Labour and the Conservatives support the Online Safety Bill, the Patriot Act was bipartisan, and voters have very little control over the EU and can’t stop Chat Control. And most of “government” isn’t directly elected: you can’t vote out the NSA, and Congress has little power over them either. The government blunts corporate abuses but doesn’t stop them: revolving doors ensure authorities target small fry while big companies like Visa keep going unimpeded. And finally, most voters don’t mind surveillance that much, since government and media manufacture consent for it. Don’t count on ordinary people to “vote it out” until it’s too late.
Lobbying against government surveillance helps marginally, but it's an eternal struggle. Governments take as much power as they can get, while abuses are exponentially harder to detect and stop than refusing to grant that power in the first place. The “slippery slope” isn’t a fallacy, it’s the record of the last twenty years. Don’t let them track speech and money with a central ID and digital currency, just because you don’t like a few tech bros or online trolls.
Ditching Google is not the same thing as removing Google from governance of your life, though. I don't use Google search, but I am sure they know who I am and sell that data to anyone who wants it, including government agencies which can't legally obtain that data on their own due (ostensibly) to citizen oversight.
However, the average person at least has some teeny tiny say in government via democratic processes and oversights. They have zero power against a big company unless they are a major shareholder.
The fundamental difference of "one person, one vote" and "one dollar, one vote" should not be lost in this discussion.
Big bureaucracies are terribly disempowering no matter who runs them, but in government at least you have some tiny amount of representation vs zero in the private sector.
Taxes? So I get some roads and schools and parks and old people healthcare, and lose some to corruption. Better that than making Bezos and Zucky even richer.
Meanwhile the government protects many of my "freedoms" from private intrusions when it comes to things like bankruptcy protections, credit bureau limitations, telemarketing, angry gunowners, etc.
I've run into trouble with the law on a few occasions, but it was never terribly oppressive -- probably largely thanks to my race, class, and politics. If I were a poor Black man or a conservative white man, I'd probably have a very different view of government.
Thinking about it some more, I think think this just circles back to the old "freedom from" and "freedom to" debate... not sure that's worth getting too much into here, since we're unlikely to change anyone's minds or reveal new perspectives.
The government is authorized by it's own citizens to use force on some citizens (such as criminals).
That being said, your point might have been when did the government last use force in an unjust manner? That's a matter of constant political debate.
1970, though I hope we aren't at risk of that happening again anytime soon. The modern military has been pretty good at staying apolitical.
