I take it that is an attempted barb against the block relay network protocol, but I don't really get it--  Block relay network protocol is completely open, anyone can run it. Anyone can run their own servers, anyone can connect to the existing public servers.  And lots of people do, including even non-miners (not to mention small miners).

Bringing more efficient relay to the ordinary Bitcoin protocol is a reasonable goal-- absolutely, but it takes time to develop a good protocol for it;   There have been something like 4 major revisions of the relay network protocol since the last major release of Bitcoin Core; supporting the protocol as an external gateway allows rapid development and much better safety and security since bugs in the relay network client cannot easily break your node. We've learned a lot too, like a simple protocol gets almost all of the benefit, that TCP behavior matters a lot more than smaller optimizations, that even with moderate compression hashing becomes the bottleneck, etc. Meanwhile, there hasn't been much development for other schemes. (And much of what has been developed turned out to be much less efficient than the block relay network protocol).

More protocols for transmitting the bitcoin consensus also increases the robustness of the system: if someone finds an attack to jam block broadcast via the classical protocol, blocks can still get through via the alternative protocol(s).

Also, relay efficiency itself is just one of MANY sources of delay in consensus; and we've been busily at work on the others in Bitcoin Core. Dropping or diminishing that work just to re-implement the still-in-flux protocol of the relay network client wouldn't be a good use of resources. Beyond that: If you disagree and think that particular piece is more urgently important then why aren't you doing it?