"virtualenvs suck, why can't it be like NPM?" is a specific problem and a specific solution. The problem being having to manage venvs (which have many gotchas and pitfalls, and no standarization), and the solution is to replace those with packages being installed into the project folder with standardized and well-known tools.
Keep an eye on https://peps.python.org/pep-0582/ it's a proposal to add local directory/node_modules-like behavior to package installs. It stalled out a few years ago but I heard there is a lot more discussion and push to get it in now.
I think if this PEP makes it in then like 90% of people's pain with pip just completely goes away almost overnight. Love it or hate it the NPM/node_modules style of all dependencies dumped in a local directory solves a _ton_ of problems in the packaging world. It would go a long way towards making the experience much smoother for most python users.
