The difference between Boeing/FAA and an airline such as Garuda is the place in the food chain. Boeing & the FAA are the authoritative sources, the wellspring of the safety paradigm for aviation. Until the MAX fiasco, they were regarded as credible (though somewhat tarnished after the B787 program to industry insiders). Now they cannot be trusted by anyone. This is now "
common knowledge", everyone believes that everyone else believes it.
They have confirmed what many people have long suspected about the modern economic system, that in fact it is corrupt to the core. It laid bare the "whatever it takes" as the new norm, it is the final signal that nothing can be trusted.
It is this loss of trust at the core of the system that is the issue. If it can happen to Boeing and the FAA, that had been assumed and implicitly trusted to "do the right thing". They failed and put profit before everything else. If it can happen to Boeing/FAA it can happen in every other aspect of their lives.