The issue is how to know when the self-signed cert if trustworthy. I agree that the root CA trust system is not the answer, and web of trust doesn't work in practice, but I don't know how we can know if a self-signed cert is trustworthy in the first place. Besides doing out of band fingerprint verification (assuming the sideband isn't also compromised).

That said, I'd be more inclined to trust a self-signed cert of a CA signed one. I don't even know half the CAs that my device trusts, and some I recognise (government ones) I explicitly wouldn't trust.