> 3. people routinely freak out about 'unsafe', which is a bit much given the first point [borrow checker]

It sounds like you're making a common misconception here. unsafe code and the borrow checker are not closely related, and unsafe blocks are not a way to play fast and loose with ownership issues. See https://steveklabnik.com/writing/you-can-t-turn-off-the-borr...

If you don't want to deal with the borrow checker, the solution isn't unsafe, it's Arc, Clone, RefCell, etc.