When someone takes on a project to build a board with their own custom layout, it is usually the project they want, not the board. 
Fortunately not everyone has to design their own custom layout and build their own keyboard from scratch, in order to get something better than ANSI. It’s entirely possible to use someone else’s existing better design, with options ranging from pre-built keyboards, to kits requiring some assembly, to design sketches requiring full DIY. For instance ...
... a μTRON ...
... a Maltron ...
... an Ergodox ...
... an Atreus ...
... an ErgoPro ...
... a Keyboardio ...
I am so used to the ANSI layout that it would be a pointless waste of time, at my age, to unlearn it and learn something else. In 35 years of typing on that layout (or its vintage equivalents back in the day), I've not acquired any RSI or joint pain. I am a normal, healthy human being who knows how to touch type and has no issues with shifting his left hand down a bit to chord LCTRL with his left pinky. Why in the world would I go looking for something else? Not only am I unlikely to gain more than a few wpm in typing speed, I don't need more wpm of typing speed.
If more comfortable and efficient keyboarding isn’t a priority for you, that’s entirely fine. If you only ever type for a couple hours a day, you can take frequent breaks, and you don’t have any desire to spend brain cycles thinking about human–computer interfaces or analyzing your workflow, great. You can spend your effort and attention on something else. (In that case, I’m not quite sure why you’re on geekhack though.)
Similarly, if you always eat at restaurants or limit your home cooking to scrambled eggs and spaghetti, it’s not worthwhile spending a bunch of time and money on fancy knives, pots, cookbooks, and kitchen appliances.
To extend the argument, there are all kinds of aspects of our built environment which are suboptimal (sometimes downright hostile) for human use. Pretty much everything we do – what we eat, how we dress, how we wash ourselves, how we organize our time, what we do for entertainment, how our homes and cities are laid out, the user interfaces on all our gadgets, our language and writing system, our social, political, and economic structures, our mathematical notations and conventions, etc. – is constrained by path-dependant cultural traditions. The “easy” road through life is to accept,
prima facie, the context where you’re born, never try to learn how or why anything works the way it does, and never bother to redesign anything from first principles.
However, note: it’s a simple fact that many people end up severely injuring themselves with excessive and stressful keyboard use. For some of these people, using a computer efficiently is an integral part of their work or some major hobby. Many others avoid hand/wrist injuries by sitting in awkward postures which shift strain to their shoulders, neck, and back, and end up with back pain or compromised mobility in old age.
Even for those who can type in a way which avoids injury, the design of the standard keyboard and mouse causes frequent tiny interruptions to
flow, which in aggregate make a significant difference in people’s ability to undertake difficult creative projects or reduce peak performance in speed-sensitive work such as transcription, data entry, professional photo retouching, or video games.
