So many complaints about web technology, where is the replacement? I'd be interested to know if there was the one true layout system that everyone agrees on
TeX [0] is in some sense "the one true layout system", but it's designed for printed documents, so it doesn't work on the web [1]. And in some ways, it's much simpler than CSS (you can build nearly everything from only a dozen typesetting primitives or so), but in other ways it's much more complex (since TeX is itself a fairly complex programming language). It's typesetting quality is still unbeaten by any of its competitors though, even 50 years after its first release.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX
[1]: But it does work on WEB :) [2]
Not which works under the same constraints as the web.
But for simpler scenarios (like fixed-sized paper, desktop displays before super-wide screens), you can have both simpler and more precise layout systems.