The goodput decreases for everyone then, since each flow requires a 3-RTT handshake and 1-2-RTT tear-down. This is particularly bad if you're starting up a lot

The goodput decreases for everyone then, since each flow requires a 3-RTT handshake and 1-2-RTT tear-down. This is particularly bad if you're starting up a lot of small flows, where the control-plane information becomes a non-negligible fraction of the total data sent. I think ideally, we'd create a TCP variant where localhost maintains a per-destination receiving window for all flows to that destination, so flows running in parallel or flows started in rapid succession won't have to start their windows at 0 and slowly increase them. Moreover, this way congestion control applies to all packet flows for a (source, destination) pair, instead of to individual flows. HTTP/2 and HTTP pipelining take a crack at this by running multiple application-level flows (i.e. HTTP requests) through the same receiving window (i.e. the same TCP socket), but they're not the only application-level protocols that could stand to benefit.