"The utility of the command line would plunge if we didn't have any of those"
If I'd meant "been eliminated", I would have said that. Nevertheless, I cite the "your mom" argument. "People" are terrified of the nice command line, and we think that they're going to switch to a vastly, vastly more user hostile one, no matter how friendly and chipper it may seem on first glance? If "people" wanted command lines that much they'd already be using them.
I would counter your claims with the simple fact that the earliest command-line interfaces had none of these. A process change only has to offer an incremental improvement over what came before to drive adoption. Those of us who used the earliest shells and the job-control languages that preferred them know that the bar for usefulness can be set quite low and the tool will still be used and improved upon.