Agreed, but I personally would still prefer external hub versus one built into a monitor or other piece of hardware. Just because when you do custom hardware work, it is not totally unreasonable that a USB port might get taken out by someone wiring something wrong. Having it be integrated to a $1000 monitor would make me want to hurt someone, having it in a $5-20 hub I wouldn't really care as much.

But for the average person not doing that type of work, your right a simple hub in the monitor is an easy and fairly elegant solution. Effectively a docking station would also be a simple solution as likely the extra ports are not needed when on the go most of the time.