Git usage is only one part of a wider engineering org. That like saying "bugless code is objectively better" without considering time to delivery, engineering resources, etc.
Better to work with of course. If you have valid reasons to have branches, such as a need to ship multiple versions, I don't have a problem with that. But day-to-day work is better done via rebasing rather than making a ton of public branches that get merged. If you know what you're doing then rebasing is just as easy as merging. As others have said, git rerere helps a lot too.