On the one hand, I sort of agree with you, I think the disadvantages of current PGP tools are overstated. But I think there are some plausible alternatives depending on your use case. They just aren't bundled into a single tool.
For file encryption, there's age. This uses all modern crypto and does authenticated encryption.
For signing, there's signify. I wonder if age and signify can be made to use the same keys...?
For live two-party encryption, there are protocols appropriate to the use case. Axolotl for chat, Wormhole for file transfers.
For PKI, there's... whatever people actually do instead of PGP keyservers and WoT, because they've never been a reliable way to find out someone's public key. In practice, you'd either download it from someone's website, get it off a keyring, receive it through some other secure channel, or be given it in person.
It's ironic that people make the argument "the reason no one uses PGP is that it doesn't have network effects, and the reason it can't build a network is that it sucks", because the thing keeping me on PGP is its network effects. In the circles I run in, you can count on people having PGP keys and knowing how to use them for encryption and signing. They've been used in Linux packaging for years, for example. I can't count on someone using age, at least not yet.