I agree with your second paragraph very much. However, your third paragraph points out the adage that continually needs to be reiterated, and you kind of hint a

I agree with your second paragraph very much. However, your third paragraph points out the adage that continually needs to be reiterated, and you kind of hint at it. If you are writing a basic app that fetches some json and displays it to a small group of users, then no, a framework stack like react/redux is not needed and you can stick to the basics. But when you have a complex application that needs to scale, react is a handy tool to help accomplish this task. Furthermore, I think it's normal for react to bloat a little bit while programmers suss out new features and usage. However, hopefully paradigms will solidify over time and that bloat will start to deflate.. hopefully.