The above are two scripts that use an alternate method to enable natural scrolling and tap-to-click on machines running the i3 window manager. This was created after a realization that, for machines that do not use a synaptics touchpad, the easily googlable solutions to enable universal natural scrolling and tap-to-click are not applicable: these include modifying .Xmodmap (not universal) and using synclient (also not universal).
The above scripts may not work for your machine and may require modifications, but hopefully only minor ones. You may have to change the arguments to grep and the format of the cut commands to grab the proper fields. The hope is, however, that this is straight forward enough. It will certainly save you time if it works, and enable universal natural scrolling as well as the tap-to-click feature.
Save the scripts to some easily accessible folder. For me it is "~/.scripts/", and then add the following lines to the end of your i3 configuration file: "exec (path to script folder)/inverse-scroll.sh" and "exec (path to script folder)/tap-to-click.sh"
Test the script before-hand! Make sure the values of $id, $natural_scrolling_id, and $tap_to_click_id are correct! This works on my computer but it may not work on yours out of the box!
And that's it. hopefully it is straight-forward enough and provides a nice fix for those without synaptics touchpad drivers.