Interestingly, Windows actually did exactly what's proposed at the end when MS added them in Vista. To minimize the security issues with symlinks, you had to elevate to admin to create them.
It was only during the life of Windows 10 that they even added the option to not have to elevate to create them. It was done specifically because symlinks are often shared across systems since they end up in places like git repos and npm packages: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlin...
There is an option (that is proposed when you install git) to allow normal users to create symlinks. The fact is that symlinks are very useful to a developer, and a lot of development tools make use of them.
It was only during the life of Windows 10 that they even added the option to not have to elevate to create them. It was done specifically because symlinks are often shared across systems since they end up in places like git repos and npm packages: https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2016/12/02/symlin...