I've mentally tried to spec out what that would look like. It's weird and very unlike how we operate today. It is not clear to me that anything I've mentally sketched out is a win even if it were magically manifested for me with no effort.

I don't think this is accidental complexity, it's essential complexity. To the extent that it seemed easier in the past, it's because we ignored some of that complexity and paid the price. Putting up a truly production-grade service is fundamentally hard.

Now, I think it probably will get easier over time as we grapple with these problems. Integrating with auth, for instance, should be easier, and that can be solved with some more code, and formal and informal standards. It's not all essential complexity. But I think a good deal of it is, or at least it is from anything remotely resembling our current perspective.