Several of these already exist, like lodash and underscore (which is a subset of lodash). After the rapid improvements on both the browser and node sides of the last couple of years (which filled in many of the blanks in this hypothetical "standard library"), they are less necessary than they may have been before. Also they can become something of a crutch. Fixing a bug a couple of days ago, I realized that an argument of Object.assign() needed to be deep-copied. Rather than adding a dependency for lodash or underscore or even some more limited-purpose deepcopy package, I just figured out which member of the object needed to be copied and did so explicitly. Done.

Another good way to not have to depend on big/tiny/weird modules published by others is to use coffeescript. So much finicky logic and array-handling just goes away.

Not everyone would use it, that's my point. The inertia behind the existing system is too great, especially in enterprise. All that would happen is that library would become just another Node package, and then you've got the "n+1 standards" problem.

The "nonexistent standard library" wasn't a problem in the days when javascript development meant getting JQuery and some plugins, or some similar library. It only became a problem after the ecosystem got taken over by a set of programming paradigms that make no sense for the language.

Yes, in my mind you'd have to change everything from the ground up, starting with no longer using javascript outside of the browser.