Rust is designed to make it easy and safe to build the 1% of your application that cares strongly about resource usage, because for certain application domains

Rust is designed to make it easy and safe to build the 1% of your application that cares strongly about resource usage, because for certain application domains (like low-level server software or operating systems) that section might make up more like 10% or even 100% of your application. In those situations, Rust can provide a lot of advantages that a less strict tool might not be able to provide. It sounds to me like the design philosophy that informs Rust is different from the design philosophy you'd prefer, and that's okay! That means Rust might not be a compelling fit for your problems, but not every tool is going to fit every problem domain. That doesn't mean the tool is broken, just that it's designed for a different situation.