To be clear, I'm critical of the argument for many of the same reasons you are. However, the counter argument is that libtool is an existence proof that there

To be clear, I'm critical of the argument for many of the same reasons you are. However, the counter argument is that libtool is an existence proof that there is a simpler cross-platform interface that developers can work with and generally prefer for making libraries & shared libraries. At the very least you can accomplish what it does. Honestly, I think he's absolutely right that it is possible to correct the problem in ld, but it require orchestration of a lot of work that a) isn't a priority, because libtool already solves the problem "well enough" b) most platforms have little incentive to do so, and c) that's not the Cathedral in the Cathedral & Bazaar model.