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“The most effective prison is one where the inmates believe they’re free.”

Then every society that has ever existed is a “prison” because every society imposes laws and rules of behavior on it’s people. It restricts they’re freedom to do whatever they want to do.

And that’s a great thing! Otherwise society would be chaotic and at the mercy of thugs and bullies, and they would restrict your freedom by terrorizing you.

Absolute freedom exists only if you live by yourself in the wild, and even then it’s restricted by the consequences imposed by nature.

So if absolute freedom is what you want go live by yourself in some desolate outpost.

But people are social animals, they like being and interacting with each other. So when they came together as tribes and then larger societies they discovered that in order to peacefully coexist some standards of behavior had to be enforced. And therefore there would need to be in the tribe or society a force bigger than any other that would enforce those rules and regulations. Hence the tribal chief, the king, the emperor - government.

So the issue is not whether your freedom is restricted, but which and how much and by whom, for the sake of peaceful coexistence and prosperity.

Or as the founders eloquently put it...

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

And the constitution defines what this “greatest force” that restrict your freedoms should be - the governing institutions.

And the vast majority of us are quite happy with most of those restriction and they’re constantly tweaked with passing or eliminating laws by people who WE the people picked to make those laws.

So, yes, we gladly live in a self imposed “prison” because the alternative would be hell.