Yeah, I try to avoid "sudo pip install" for CLI utilities if I can (and discourage its use to others). I put ~/.local/bin on my PATH (nonstandard XDG -like convention) and use "pip install --user" instead.

I've seen too many Python environments hosed by folks who aren't Python experts to keep suggesting that "sudo pip install <CLI tool>" is a thing most users should be doing.

So you need to be root to write to /usr/local/bin/. How does NPM magically solve this? (pip has the `--user` flag to install for just the current user, as tom points out.)