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You might ask: how could such a choice be allowed? Don't we have government regulators to oversee this sort of thing?

Two words: regulatory capture. The head of the FAA at the time was a former Boeing lobbyist. With the encouragement of George W Bush, who was trying to "deregulate" the airline industry, he worked to make the FAA more corporate-friendly. The decision to remove MCAS from the pilot manuals was supported by the FAA.