No I picked the case I'm dealing with most commonly: which is establishing trust. X509 certs will also do this.

I have numerous criticisms of the GPG system but it's not a solution to just not implement any solution at all: I.e. I need revocation lists, I need intermediate keys, I need the ability to establish alternate chains of trust or promote a chain to trusted. Some of this is very hard to do with x509 even or not will supported.

Trust meaning who you should do business with? Whose advice you should take?

Rather than “trust” you mean something very specific: whether a key was issued by an entity, or attested to from a set of authorities. The “web of trust” model that PGP/GPG supports is not the ideal means of implementing this.