> evolution be halted in a clearly suboptimal position

It’s clear it’s imperfect. But not clear there is an obvious path to a nearby local maxima.

Design choices have tradeoffs.

And even if that were true, who would take advantage of that “better” language in a purely abstract sense? New language standards primarily exist to benefit existing C++ code bases, and the cohort of engineers who work on them. You have to consider that social reality.