Without some form of MCAS there would be no 737-MAX at all, and it’s not fair to say that the whole plane was a corner cutting exercise either, it was an attemp

Without some form of MCAS there would be no 737-MAX at all, and it’s not fair to say that the whole plane was a corner cutting exercise either, it was an attempt to improve an older, proven design driven by customer demand. I would argue that they applied a software kludge on a design, which is basically no more fit to fly in such a configuration. They did that because Airbus' 320 NEO put them into full throttle panic mode. Espeically since American, a lifelong Boeing customer, considered a pretty big order with Airbus. So, instead of a completely new clean-sheet design (which they considered) they rushed a plane to market, which needed to be fixed with software because it's inherently not fit to fly without such fixes and slapped a 737 sticker onto the plane because of competitive advantage. The obviously dodgy shenanigans applied in the certification process also don't really help.