I think your post goes to support my point that there is great diversity in markets, and we can't expect a single individual's experience or preference to accurately represent such.
> the anti-tax attitudes of those people who ironically would prefer to drive their own cars.
I am curious as to why you think that there would be such a large crossover between those who would prefer to have a "manual" car, and those who have anti-tax attitudes?
Because self-driving cars are socialist to an extreme. The real benefit of them is not to free the human of the tedious task of driving, but to take the human out of the traffic system so it can be optimized for the greater good. The same could be said about taxes: they sacrifice individual wealth for the greater good.
There will necessarily be a lot of resistance to self driving cars...people like driving! But they are quite inevitable, not necause people will "prefer" them but for totally societal economic reasons. And that is why your argument doesn't make sense to me, it's as if we will have any choice about it, when the current system is so messed up and under funded that it's obvious we won't.
There's no reason to expect "enjoys the experience of driving" and "is opposed to taxation" are descriptions of an individual that must be found exclusively together. That's the issue I take with your original statement.
I also see no reason to expect that it is inevitable that self-driving cars become mandatory globally, but that is a different point entirely and not one I'm interested in pursuing right now.
Taxation is the redistribution of wealth to benefit society as a whole. Self-driving cars is about taking away the task of driving from humans, which is really a privilege, for the benefit of infrastructure optimization. If you believe in retaining personal wealth, you probably believe in retaining your driving privileges as well.
> I also see no reason to expect that it is inevitable that self-driving cars become mandatory globally, but that is a different point entirely and not one I'm interested in pursuing right now.
Your premise is just completely flawed: you see self-driving cars as providing the benefit of freeing humans from the tedium of driving themselves, when in reality they are more about optimizing limited infrastructure. The former is a "nice to have but not necessary" benefit, the latter basically drastically reduces the amount of resources needed to maintain a city, it is a serious economic benefit that will be very hard to ignore. Of course, your city could allow for manual driving, but at great cost in needing more roads and such, it would be a serious tax burden on your residents (and rich countries can afford it now, but will they be able to afford it as populations double, triple, and space becomes much more limited?).
So your premise is flawed, you are attacking the wrong thing.
> the anti-tax attitudes of those people who ironically would prefer to drive their own cars.
I am curious as to why you think that there would be such a large crossover between those who would prefer to have a "manual" car, and those who have anti-tax attitudes?