Smilin',
I'm not against all automation. But, what is needed on the part of aircrews is to be able to do the right when the automation fails, and it will. Clearly, we've had several recent horrible examples of failure to recognize and respond to automation failures.
No, I know you're not - we're on the same page simply because we know. I suspect Flight Safety's here and even DC-ATE among many others - it's good company because it's right view. The devil's in the details, but this has clearly gone south and needs correcting while the trend is still turning and not fully established.
How we get the airline and government execs to understand that is the big question.
It seems as though change only occurs when sufficient heat is applied. Heat is the result of the effective appication of power; power derives from money or threat of loss of political position or possibly prestige and inflluence, (power's distant cousins).
Political heat here means too many accidents killing too many people (particularly in the wrong countries - those that pay attention to statistics), or raising the awareness of insurance companies and passenger lobby groups and professional aviation organizations.
Bureaucratic structures usually though not always do nothing nor will they change unless mandated by those above. Even then, sufficient change to just stop the "hissing" will be done.
This is nothing new and in some ways is a complex but valid check and balance. The system seems to have sorted itself out thus far but it is the processes above which have accomplished this. There are plenty of current examples. This is not the only place that the kind of questioning we are seeing here is being done.