>now you need 50 different modules from 50 different authors
Not necessarily, take a look at lodash and friends. There is nothing stopping bundling of tiny modules into big "libraries" to be used.
As for the rest, you need to do that validation anyway. But if it were bundled in a large library there is MUCH more code that you need to review.
with something like the module "left-pad", it's a no brainer to use the library. I know that it's under an EXTREMELY open license, the code is really small, and by vendoring your dependencies (you are vendoring your dependencies right?) this whole issue would have been a 5-10 minute fix that only needed to be done when you want to upgrade your dependencies next time.
Choice can be a bad thing too - when there are 10 different modules for doing a moderately complex thing, you have to figure out which one is best for your project, and whether it's still actively maintained, bugs are fixed, how do they feel about making breaking changes, etc.