what happened to the heady days of the internet when a standard popped onto the scene and quickly matured to give way for the next one?
They didn't last beyond the days when the net was only used by a small group of experts and highly technical users. The state of the web in the late 90s and the early zeroes (remember that?) was a direct result of following this sort of philosophy on an unworkably large scale, with multiple competing platforms with inconsistent feature sets (sometimes deliberately so).
You can't just throw something together when it will be used by literally billions of people, many of which will never update their software unless forced to, and implemented by dozens of entities with differing agendas, technical constraints, and visions of progress, that just leads to madness, browser wars, and the biggest installed base winning.
Living on Earth may be expensive, but it includes an annual free trip around the Sun.