Though I agree with you to an extent, the hero's journey includes an element of inner change in values or moral disposition. That, and not the subject's situation (or GPS coordinates), is what makes it the hero's journey.

Be as it may, I'm not a fan of this element, because it assumes that every hero worth following is morally lacking to begin with and that that's the only thing worth writing about. First, the inner world of a well-crafted character can be so fundamentally alien to any reader that its discovery can fill any number of pages. Second, and more importantly, focusing on the accidental faults of an individual person while neglecting commentary on the vices of the world at large is asinine. It also gets very tiring as you age, because you keep reading the same story for decades.

The good news is that, in many novels (and certainly in mine, check for example "When Ra Rows through the Gates of Duat"), that inner change is elided. The character's situation changes; they may completely step out of GPS range, but they remain fundamentally the same person. The conflict can be about creatively making do in an imperfect world.