It has been a long slog to convince people that fly-by-wire systems can be trusted. Airbus has worked a long time to get the bugs out. (including some accidents, however failures in hydraulic control systems have caused accidents too)
In a modern fly-by-wire aircraft, "flight envelope protection" is deeply integrated into the control system. It is something that pilots are trained about; when the system is in a degraded mode because of a sensor failure, it tells the pilot, and pilots are trained how to deal with that.
Fly-by-wire brings large benefits such as a reduction in weight, lower assembly costs, lower maintenance cost, and better comfort because fly-by-wire can counteract turbulence. These are passed on to the consumer in the end.
To avoid any investment in engineering or pilot training, Boeing bolted a half-baked "flight envelope protection" system on when moving the engines caused a change in the flight envelope. Too bad they didn't tell the pilots...
I wouldn't say that the 737 MAX should never fly again but the plane should get a new type certificate and pilots should be retrained.
As a passenger one thing you can do is fly Jetblue because they don't have any 737s in their fleet. Also ask airlines about the A220 and E195-2 airliners. These are smaller than the 737 but feel larger from a passenger perspective and also have lower seat*mile cost. Try them out, you'll be impressed!