> If people were, by default, expecting to pay for everything they use, spying on them would not be accepted.

The spying may have started with free products, but it has metastasized into every aspect of life, free or not. It always does.

> choose to be willfully blind to the spying

Many don't. They also, by and large, don't have a choice. Data brokers, Flock cameras, WiFi-based radar[1]. You really can only do so much as an individual before the only escape is being a hermit in a cave.

> The primary drivers of human mind, before self-purification, are greed, anger, and ignorance

Which then gets distilled into the only drivers of corporations. Corporations that then destroy all moral options for individuals.

[1]https://theweek.com/tech/wifi-signals-now-tracking-users-at-...

Funnily enough I've found for the most part the counter to all this spying also tends to be free products. Signal, pi-hole, ublock origin, graphene OS, Opnsense, Linux, etc. I have yet to find paid-for apps that are superior to the free ones in this regard. If I want an image editor I'm using Gimp, not Photoshop. Libreoffice is better than Microsoft Office if you don't want to be spied on. Most of the cost is learning about the alternatives and how to use them.