This might be a framing issue? Bitcoin itself might not be beholden to any government. But I don't really care about Bitcoin itself. It's just a protocol. It doesn't have feelings or financial interests.

Individuals who use Bitcoin, though, are, in some absolute sense, no less beholden to their government simply by using Bitcoin. An economy can always be built on top of exchange of physical goods, including but not necessarily limited to banknotes, without the government's consent. But any transaction that needs to go over the Internet can more-or-less only happen at the pleasure of whoever controls the Internet in your area. Which, if you're living somewhere where authoritarianism is a serious concern, is probably the government.

Good point.

I expect transaction fees will dominate the block reward within 4 halvings, as they are already within an order of magnitude of the block subsidy...

Yes, they’ll dominate, but will they stay high enough to maintain the current level of security? Average transaction fees would have to go up ~8x in real dollar terms to do so, meanwhile if Layer 2 solutions take off there could be downward pressure from existing levels.