Merge conflicts are the single greatest killer of productivity on software teams I've been on. Second is people spending days on architecture or other high-difficulty problems without asking for help while working in the wrong direction entirely.

But by far the most "development is now broken" issues have come from improperly resolved merged conflicts.

I still don't understand why people would trade more merge conflicts (and thus more bugs) for some ideal notion of "an easy to read Git history," but I'm glad it's working for you!