Modern fighter aircraft are often designed to be aerodynamically unstable. This allows the removal or reduction of control surfaces, design of an airframe that

Modern fighter aircraft are often designed to be aerodynamically unstable. This allows the removal or reduction of control surfaces, design of an airframe that is shaped to produce a small radar signature, and by naturally being unstable the craft wants to move around wildly so it has increased pitch, roll and yaw potential. The software is then used to automatically move control surfaces to maintain stability. This is a deliberate design decision and results in a stealthier, faster, more manoeuvrable aircraft. Passenger aircraft on the other hand are designed to be as stable as possible, to ensure stability and control authority are maintained by default as a failsafe. Changing the design of an aircraft that is assumed to be stable by default and introducing software to compensate is a very different proposition to building an airframe from scratch with the explicit intent of it being unstable. The failure mode of an airframe that's presumed stable should be that it will at the very least be able to glide down a reasonable descent slope. The failure mode of an unstable airframe is pilot ejection and loss of the airframe typically, although military aircraft failure tolerances are quite different (the computer should be able to compensate for damaged components no longer responding as intended etc). So in answer to the question, it's not really comparing apples with apples. I would say that a passenger airliner should be able to maintain reasonable balance without constant interjection of a computer. But moreover, if a change in the airframe causes an imbalance that only software can correct, the manufacturer should inform and train the purchasing airlines and their pilots in these new software systems. The fact they apparently did not has caused the deaths of hundreds of people. For that reason I'd say as a whole the 737-Max is excessively, perhaps criminally faulty.