While you say many reasonable things and describe a perfectly reasonable setup and desire - surely it's clear that your situation is _extremely_ unusual? Browsers are absolutely _also_ reasonable in prioritizing secure defaults for setups that are not similarly controlled. After all, precisely the thing that makes your situation managageble and reasonable - that being you the knowledgeable admin - is also the thing that allows you better than the average user to change defaults.

Both from a sheer numbers perspective and also from the perspective of qualitative differences between these audiences browsers are doing the right thing - prioritizing security in low-to-no-trust environments assuming low-to-no-competence administration.