I'm not asking for postgres to change its ways and become "untrustworthy".

I'm merely asking that postgres wraps more automation and convenience around the things that it already does.

Replication should generally be operated from inside psql. Spinning up a slave should be a single command. Failing over should be a single command. There should be meaningful error messages, ETAs and progress bars. No rsync'ing of WAL files, no futzing with config files. No elaborate third party 'repmgr' daemons.