While I don't mean to defend the multi-step process that led to the 2 737 Max crashes, I think this is a case where many actors combined, with most every individual action apparently seeming fairly reasonable, to achieve an outcome that was unreasonable in aggregate. (This excludes a high-level systems engineering oversight function, of course.)
The airplane needs more efficient engines.
The new engines are physically larger and the space underwing too low.
Let's move the engines forward.
That causes the stick force curve in an uncommon region of the envelope seen mostly only when hand flying and out of normal envelope.
We could fix the stick force curve by actively displacing the horizontal stabilizer under those conditions.
We can limit the authority of the stab under MCAS to 0.6°, a figure which would only be a slight hazard to flight as pilots could easily override.
We can prevent the need to retrain pilots (even if only differences training), but this requires us to use only a single angle-of-attack sensor to drive the system. That's OK, because the 0.6° limit is safe.
Later, someone else decides to give MCAS a little more control authority. It's not clear (to me) that the 0.6° prior limit was documented as something that was being relied on by regulators or not. A "safe" system being given a little more authority in the name of safety doesn't sound so bad, after all.
No analysis appears to be done for the case of multiply resetting the MCAS system, allowing for progressively more authority.
No analysis appears to be done for the fact that line pilots were relying on the "control breakaway" to interrupt automated trim motion on legacy 737s. Pilots using this undocumented technique may have become overly accustomed to it and assumed the plane was designed that way. Of course, MCAS, being a system to protect the stick force curve during manual flight, could not reasonably be disabled by a control column breakout switch, because it's designed to protect the aircraft exactly during hand flying situations where the pilot had the column in an aircraft nose up attitude (where the column breakout switches would be activated).
I agree with your overall point that the holistic outcome was bad, that it's a systems problem, but want to amplify the fact that a great many people were working diligently to accomplish their goal(s) in the face of their constraints. Very few (to perhaps none of them), pilots included, likely realized that they were acting in a short-sighted way.