I agree, it really grinds my gears when people use it as an objection to any attempt at improving a standard. People stopped taking it as what it is (a joke) and using it as an actual argument.

I think that the idea is that when there are so many competing standards it's difficult for them to get any meaningful adoption, except for the one or two that for some reason (age?) are already widely adopted. A new standard must be backed by most of the industry to succeed. JMAP doesn't seem to have many chances because the industry is Google and Microsoft with their own products.

I know the idea, but it's usually not 14-15 standards, it's usually like one really entrenched old crusty standard (if you are lucky) or (more likely) emergent glued-together patchwork of hacks.

It's definitely an uphill battle to introduce any new standard, but it does happen. USB-C, HTML5, ECMA6, I would say are some success stories.