That's absolutely daft. You can pick your lord, but they'll all demand unnecessary permissions. The road to serfdom looks like capitalism working according to spec - right up until you can't meaningfully vote.
The key is that you have to be willing to give up what those things give you as well. The article even lists several: "long waits at road toll cash lines, higher prices at grocery stores, inferior seating on airline flights."
There were very few things in the article that I read that a principled person literally could not reasonably live without. Electricity was perhaps the closest, but even most automated meter reading or smart metering programs have a way to pay a monthly fee for a dumb meter to be installed and read manually.
If that's the case, then the question is one of convenience vs privacy tradeoff. I choose to get a driver's license, to have a car and to register it and put license plates on it. I could bike or walk. I choose to use credit cards, frequent flier and other loyalty programs, to use electronic tolling and automated meter reading, to use Kindles and highlight passages, to use a TiVo, Netflix, and Amazon to consume television, to use a smartphone and many apps, to connect with friends and family on Facebook and colleagues on LinkedIn. I do so because I perceive the benefit of doing so to be extraordinarily higher than the loss of privacy.
That's quite a bit different from being a feudal serf living on a lord's land in my book.
The supermarket is recording your image as you browse through the store, and within five years will assuredly be plugging you into facial recognition software.
It is not necessary for you to have a toll transponder in order for your car to be tracked. You have a license plate which can be trivially collected and indexed with off-the-shelf hardware and software. If you have a car made within the last few years, it probably has a permanent tether to the Internet.
Your cell phone is triangulated and your location is approximated to a handful of feet by your carrier.
In some not-too-distant future, it’s easy to imagine the death of cash, the outmoded way to pay: cryptocurrency is just so much sexier.
Newsflash: every man is not his own island.
In excusing those responsible for polluting my life, you are culpable also.