You must have misunderstood something. JSON is a data format. JSON-LD is a use of that data format. Your complaint is as if you looked at the Sublime Text conf

You must have misunderstood something. JSON is a data format. JSON-LD is a use of that data format. Your complaint is as if you looked at the Sublime Text configuration file, which is in JSON, and said "I liked JSON better when you didn't have to configure anything". JSON-LD isn't designed to replace JSON, it's designed to replace all the awkward formats for RDF.