(just like modern Java can burn its runtime / GC into the binary)

No, not just like. You're downplaying significant differences between the two that do in fact matter. So much so in fact, that you're just wrong. Stop spreading misinformation.

GraalVM indeed does a lot more than Go, it's a full optimizing compiler while Go does very little optimiations.

But burning a JVM next to a jar file is not hard at all, one could make something like cosmopolitan.