Website operators don't want to have to display cookie banners

This is false. If they didn't want to display the banners they could literally remove them, there's absolutely nothing requiring them as long as they don't track your behavior. They refuse to give up tracking so they add the banners to annoy visitors and hopefully trick some of them into accidentally opting into tracking. It's an abusive manipulation of a loophole in the GDPR. If they really hated the banners they could just not track you but they rather make it your problem.

Websites did it to themselves by abusing cookies to track users. Instead of consent popups though, the EU should have just blanket banned tracking in general.

I'd honestly be so much happier if it was a permission request similar to e.g. accessing location or microphone access, for a number of reasons:

• would be easier to manage as it would end up being a single interface handled by the browser instead of a per-website implementation
• no differently worded, intentionally vague bullshit options that are designed to entrap the user
• no struggle finding the enable/disable option after clicking either accept or decline
• the ability to automatically provide a default answer that gets around to the fucking popup blocking 2/3 of the page

If website operators didn't want to ask for consent, they should stop trying to profit for your behavioral data. But they want to sell your data and have de it from you. That's the only thing not allowed. There are plenty of sites that use cookies and don't need to show a consent banner.

Website operators don’t want to have to display cookie banners and users don’t want to see them. So what are we doing?

Like the other comment, I also disagree with that. Most websites show them to make it hard to decline the tracking.

But I once saw a website (I think, it was the German idealo.de) which checked for the (now deprecated) "Do Not Track" HTTP header. If it was there, it then did not show the banner. I liked that solution.