>Which anybody who claims that MAX is safe without MCAS is ignoring: without properly working MCAS the plane effectively starts to misbehave exactly when it shouldn't (when it's harder to save it).

MCAS is there to prevent stalls at high thrust and AoA. It's also disabled when flaps are down. Meaning that it's turned off for take offs and landings where you'd most expect high thrust and AoA as well as the worst times to stall. It's hard to square that with MCAS being necessary for safe operation.