I think you've misunderstood the point I was making, which makes sense in context of the video in the OP. I'm not arguing NPM > Maven. I'm arguing NPM is conceptually simpler and easier for a newcomer to use than Maven.

Namely, the speaker made reference to "weaker" DB technologies being used due simply to a frictionless barrier to entry. Mongo was cited as one example. The use of MySQL over Postgres was another. This is basically taken verbatim from the presentation in the video.

This isn't about which systems are "better" or "worse", but which are simpler to get up and running with. Mongo is super duper simple to install and configure. So is NPM. Managing complexity is a real and valid concern, but also not what we're talking about here.