It can't incompetence because there will absolutely be engineers and designers who knew of the risks inherent to moving the CG and CoL and the deeper concerns of replacing these risks with a software solution (MCAS) which can relieve a human pilot of control. There is no way any self-respecting engineer with enough design influence would have been ignorant of the potential risks with this design.
It's probably not malice either because people generally aren't evil - especially those building planes which carry humans.
In saying that tho, there was almost certainly a "trade off" decision which was made, and thoroughly justified which traded safety for something else: most likely project delivery schedule. Was this motivated by economic reasons? Who knows. But the trade-off decision which sacrificed safety (even if in largely unknown, distant terms) would have definitely been there and was certainly a conscious decision. IMHO.