Indeed, and if the k8s api was so precisely laid out that you could look at a log of side effect changes that came as the result of scalers, operator, templates

Indeed, and if the k8s api was so precisely laid out that you could look at a log of side effect changes that came as the result of scalers, operator, templates etc that would be one thing, but we aren't there yet. Right now what i have is "oh the cluster is in a different state (there is drift) than the code, lets be a detective to see why this changed".