Are you saying that the ownership/borrowing model for memory safety was a poor choice, or that it's possible to make a language on that model that has vastly less complexity than Rust?
Because your phrasing implies the second, but I don't think I've ever heard anyone make that claim before (presumably because there's no such language lying around anywhere, so it seems hard to defend).
If the first, then I'd point out that wouldn't be a language design flaw, but rather a flawed goal (ie a goal that proved too complex to achieve) - their goal was a memory safe language that didn't rely on a GC, and the resultant design complexity is basically the best example of a way to solve for that goal so far. I'm sure there will eventually be simpler options, but I don't think you can blame designers for not having access to undiscovered techniques. That's what most anti-Rust arguements boil down to.
If you just mean you don't like the syntax, then yeah, I agree, it's a bit alien for me too, but I hardly concider that anything beyond personal taste and the difficulty of learning something new.