Even HTTP/2 Push is an order of magnitude slower than local File I/O on a good day with perfect (internet) weather. ESM isn't even the first approach to try to deal with this, for instance AMD had nothing (at first) to do with "big money" and everything to do with average web developers trying their best to practically solve the module problem for the web and CommonJS was never going to be an option in a web browser (even if AMD or ESM spec authors had magic foresight to HTTP/2 or HTTP/3 they'd still have the same concerns with CommonJS).
CommonJS was a mistake that the JS world is going to live with for years more.
The Node.js module system is only loosely based on CommonJS. The Node.js module system is probably the biggest reason of the success of the Node.js ecosystem. Ifyou want to attack Node.js you would start with the module system.
CommonJS was a mistake that the JS world is going to live with for years more.