You have correctly identified the true source of much 'professional' outrage at what Boeing has done here. The MCAS system was, at its core, about saving money.

Boeing thought it could retain the same type rating with an automated system that would make the aircraft fly the same.

It is an almost unforgivable and detestable course of action.

The way Boeing went about it is foolish, short-sighted, exceptionally dangerous, and very poor engineering.

Unfortunately, accounting methods and markets don't distinguish between these, especially where benefits (or profits) are immediately evident, but costs are occult and obfuscated. This is a situation which appears frequently, repeatedly, and notoriously in technological contexts. I'm seeing it increasingly as a fundamental conflict and paradox of market economics.

The issue can work in reverse as well: measures (practices, products, technologies, services) with immediately evident costs, but distant, obscure, or covert benefits, can be a very hard sell. Maintenance. Employee training. CO2 mitigation.

SpaceX's (almost) entire existence is centered on a cost cutting measure: reusing rockets. But they didn't approach it in a way that killed a bunch of people.

If you look at the history of flight, the biggest periods of progress killed people left and right. I'm not sure space can't go forward without doing the same.