There were, and to some extent still are, operating systems without the notion of privileged ports (because they lacked the notion of privileged users) that had

There were, and to some extent still are, operating systems without the notion of privileged ports (because they lacked the notion of privileged users) that had BSD-style sockets, clients, and servers. It's worth looking at how things worked and evolved on such operating systems, to see whether it really was easier in practice.