glofish ..as a retired B747-8/400 commander I can fully support everything in your post.
I now fly my own aircraft built on solid old-fashioned, simple principles with wires/cables directly attached from control-wheel to each control surface. Ofcourse I have electronics like an old, well-functioning autopilot, but the point is, that if anything goes wrong I can disconnect the autopilot and fly as I want and as I am trained for, w/o any underlying system interfering.