I almost feel like English should start from scratch with spelling, There are basically no consistent rules at all. I think we should assign spelling to kindergartners who actually follow the rules of English and spell things like they should be spelled.
Quinoa -> Keen-wa
Ballet -> Baal-Eh
Design -> De-zine
etc.
Simplification merged 73 characters out of tens of thousands. Simplification was just the codification of shorthands people have been using for thousands of years, some predating the Latin alphabet. It was mostly a nothingburger especially since people don’t handwrite much in the modern era and obviously Taiwanese people can still read and write fine.