The key is that not all "bloat" is the same (really)—or maybe one person's bloat is another person's preference.
A lot of "bloat" comes because our systems really aren't focused on "discoverability".
While I probably have used "pr" in the past, I've totally forgotten, the name "pr" doesn't really help me understand what it is for, and it's just one of 982 files in my /usr/bin directory alone. How does one discover it?
It's like using "sed" instead of "head": sure, if you already know "sed", you don't need "head", but for English speaking folks who know "tail" is there, it would be (and was in the old days) surprising and frustrating not to have "head".
If I have a command and I want it to do something slightly different, the first place I look is to see if there is a command line option for that. I know how to discover that (either --help or the man pages).
GUIs were better at discoverability. The menu at the top made it easy to see (and constantly reinforced) what was possible, at least until we got into the era of contextual menus, gestures and force presses.
They aren't perfect. I get plenty of dialog boxes which have a check box for "Do not show this message again" which I don't dare check, because I don't know how to bring up whatever choice it wants me to decide on should I need to change it in the future.
And once you have users/customers, it's hard to get rid of things, because they value stability.