I would also have preferred to use the operators <, >, <=, >=, and ==.  The docs in the patch explain why we can't go down this path.

Also, while counters have support for multiset operations, they continue to support other use cases a well (negative counts and fractional counts). That support can't be removed without breaking existing code that relies on it.

From the outset, a Counter was just a dictionary that return 0 for missing keys.  Users are free to use that concept however they want.