It hasn't "taken us this long to figure out..." the issues around prescribed burning are fairly modern and related to overreacting/incorrectly responding to some major wildfires that killed lots of people in the late 19th and early 20th century. (See the formation of the USFS and the policies promoted by them, Smoky the Bear, etc.)
Fire was a regular tool in everyone in North America's toolkit, indigenous or otherwise, and not something white people were too stupid to figure out.
Yes, this is a very common activity in electronics manufacturing. Big names, amongst many others are White Horse, Smith & Associates, Rand Technologies, etc.
Depending on the sensitivity and risk to a particular product, it's not uncommon to have a suite of testing done on a sample from every received shipment of a particular good, or set of goods. Testing typically goes beyond counterfeit detection to being within manufacturability and usability specs (e.g. solderability, lot code validation, date code validation, etc.)
Usually priced out of the hobbyist range, think 2-3k to do basic suite verification on a sample of 5 components. That would not include de-capping and die examination.
To be clear: herbicides are not essential in every area, but in some areas it is completely cost-ineffective to promote appropriate diversity and wildlife habitat without some use of it.
FWIW, in the region I'm currently managing a 100-acre habitat that was previously a pine plantation, it would be sacrosanct to "fence out deer." Early stage re-growth is wonderful deer habitat, lots of sunlight generates lots of forbs. However, in the same region I am in, any area left to its own devices becomes quickly overgrown to the point of making poor habitat for wildlife (no viable food, no viable cover, even though it's "thick" it is not useful to species such as deer, rabbits, quail, turkeys, etc. lacking the right kinds of food and cover).
Mechanical and fire (prescribed burns) are our primary tool we use, along with appropriate canopy thinning. However, when dealing with opportunistic species (the most aggressive here being sweetgum and chinese tallow), these methods are not effective. As each of these species re-sprout and spread via roots as well as seed, mechanical and fire only top-kill, resulting in them coming back thicker again within months. Repeated mechanical control presents significant issues both for valuable forb and impacts on land (a skid-steer is very heavy and results in significant compaction of soil, for example) and is incredibly expensive at about $1,000/acre when following proper selective practices.
We were also very much against the use of herbicides, but after numerous conversations with local biologists and forestry management professionals (our state provides them as a service), we finally realized that we were in a losing battle and selective application was the way to go. With basal spraying for larger stems of unwanted species and selective foliar for seedlings, we've reduced our costs to a fraction, reduced the damage to land and erosion, and we're seeing higher value (ecologically, not monetary) habitat with a faster turn time. Our approach is to eliminate all non-native, invasive species, develop the mix of pine savannah and hardwood bottoms our region has historically represented, and we're seeing the returns we expected much quicker than mechanical methods were providing us.
None of the "chemicals" we use are soil-active, and all of them have a half-life measured in days. We don't use them where girdling or sawing are sufficient to open canopy or create snags, and we don't broadly apply them.
I'm glad you live in a region where there are no opportunistic trees and shrubs which will crowd out other species, and where mechanical control is sufficient to restore traditional diversity, but alas, it still doesn't have the same reward everywhere. Anything left to its own devices in this region will rapidly, I mean within 5 years, become what we call the "pine curtain," useless to both wildlife and man. For centuries even the indigenous tribes had to practice regular controlled burning to fight this.
Only one of the trees I listed was invasive, the others are opportunistic natives to their regions that will outgrow everything else.
The nice "diverse" forest you're thinking of in your mind took a long time to become that way, the normal state of nature is to not create a perfect balance out of the gate, but for constant competition and regularly have to cycle through multiple iterations of configuration which are, by all means, not as productive or valuable for wildlife/nature as their final states. None of that means that using a herbicide is sufficient, but without, you're looking at potentially hundreds of years to get back a usable environment for wildlife that is well-balanced vs 10's of years.
Outside of a few soil-active herbicides, most of what they use is one-and-done and can be applied selectively to only problem plants with minimal unintended consequences.
Glyphosate is not soil active, so there are no "trees that can grow in glyphosate-doused soil."
The primary reason for broad herbicide treatment as part of site prep is to avoid low-value, or ecologically opportunist species that thrive in disturbed soil/land, and prevent either the target species from growing, or create an environment which lacks the diversity necessary for the region. For example, sweetgum, huisache, black locust, chinese tallow (as examples from specific regions in the US), will all take over and completely dominate a deforested section and prevent oaks, pines, etc. and appropriate forb for wildlife without consistent, ongoing burns.
FWIW, there are no "trees which are GMOd to live with glyphosate application" - you're thinking non-tree crops. Nearly every softwood and hardwood tree is susceptible to damage from Glyphosate.
Even in Houston, which is an exceptionally hot and humid city in the summer, and cold and humid in the winter, outdoor dining is ubiquitous across the city in all seasons. A popular restaurant down the street from me is outdoor-only and stays packed in the evenings year round. There is no dearth of outdoor dining in the US.
On monsoon days, or during periods of peak heat/cold? Yes, the outdoor table attendance is down, but rarely zero.
As others have stated though, outdoor dining in other cities is typically nothing at all like what the Atlantic is discussing in NYC. NYC wasn't built for outdoor dining, but it has nothing to do with being car-centric, or too hot/humid.
The official terms at play here are "modular" and "mobile" home. These are the terms that define the kind of house you're thinking of. "Mobile" homes are constructed to a separate set of parameters, and are not "permanently" mounted on the property. (Regardless of how "permanent" you make the attachment for a "mobile" home, it is still titled separately from the land.)
Modular is the term of art for a factory-built home that is installed on the land and becomes titled as "real property" with the land its self, search for "modular home builders." Nearly every modular builder also builds mobile homes, so when you go to their site, look for "available as modular" or "modular" as a category or search term.
FWIW, "modular" and "mobile" are actually built to two different manufacturing requirements and specification, and why "mobile" homes are often disallowed in towns and cities, amongst other reasons, is that HUD controls the specs for "mobile" while "modular" must meet local building codes.
AFAICT, these range from $84-$170/sq ft for exterior materials only, no labor, no insulation, no foundation. If you're looking to DIY something and want an easy start, these and many other options may be a good choice for you, but this is very expensive for some markets, given you just have materials for the shell.
Generally speaking, it's best to think in "heated + cooled sq feet" for comparison, and also consider the foundation type. These are post-frame, so in the market where I had built, $120/sqft for post-frame is "cheap/budget", and $300/sqft is "high-end". We paid $180/sq ft, and that included electrical work, plumbing, appliances, A/C, full custom cabinets, custom windows, etc. As you can see, these aren't a great deal in that regard, but your local market conditions may vary.
You need to work with a builder, since we were working in a somewhat "rural" area, we couldn't work with any of our local builders (in the city where we live), without going way out of budget due to travel expenses, etc.
As to how we found the builder? Google was of little help, and nearly everyone with a website was saying things like "we start at $250/ft for a barndo" -- basically, insane pricing.
What we ultimately did: I went to local stores, talked to neighbors, and started asking them for references for different parts of the process - e.g.: well building, dirt work, etc. I aligned on the most common people they referred, then asked each of them the same two questions: who do you like working with as a GC, and who built your house? Everyone aligned on a single person, so I called him and the rest is history.
As someone who recently went through the pre-fab house market for a weekend/cabin build for a property we own, this product suffers from the same problem nearly every other pre-fab "designer" product we saw out there: the cost is substantially more than custom-built and the time to deliver is as long, or longer.
I mention "designer" since there is a pre-fab market for non-designer homes, which do come pretty close to the mission of being a better value without being a "mobile home" - think Pratt, etc.
Ultimately, we went stick-built on-site and paid roughly 35-50% per sq ft of what a comparable pre-fab designer home would have cost, while allowing us to focus costs on the aspects of the house that mattered most to us, while going budget where it didn't matter as much, and still having full control over the process. FWIW, for less than the price of this unit alone, we had a full custom 1,200 sqft house 3BR/2Bth, metal garage, 800' driveway, well, septic, and 1-acre pond built.
I can see if you're willing to pay the premium on the design aesthetics, but designer modular houses have a long way to go to being a more affordable option for most buyers.
Fire was a regular tool in everyone in North America's toolkit, indigenous or otherwise, and not something white people were too stupid to figure out.