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Watch out folks. The development of "smart highway technology" amenable to self-driving vehicles offers many benefits but also includes open road tolling. In time, this technology will permit roads that are now free to be made subject to "congestion pricing" and to universal use charges to finance transportation budgets and to modify traffic and housing patterns.

Unless there is effective opposition, at least in Blue State America, routine car use will likely be made to pay not only for much of the cost of roads, but also for public transportation, with discriminatory pricing for the sake of poor relief, racial equity, and tax and redistribution schemes. It may be that many of us will one day reminisce about driving ourselves in cars that we owned on roads that were almost entirely free of tolls and use charges.