If your commits are not referenced by a branch or tag, then those are eventually committed. Having to have a branch to keep the commit around means you need to come up with a name for it if you ever want more than one name. When I go back to Mercurial, it's actually quite relieving to not have to come up with a short name to describe what the current work branch is doing, only commit messages.

And no staging area is strictly simpler than having a staging area, which is contrary to your assertion.