I'm not "conveniently ignoring" it, it's just the distinction is irrelevant. You are running npm as root and installing packages. Even if you completely ignore

I'm not "conveniently ignoring" it, it's just the distinction is irrelevant. You are running npm as root and installing packages. Even if you completely ignore the security issues (which was my entire argument to begin with that you ignored). "Globally available" in this context really just means "put in your PATH", which can easily be accomplished without giving a bunch of random javascript tools root access to the machine.