I came into Rust from C++ and it basically had no learning curve at all for me, since it "merely" formalizes/codifies and enforces some pieces of best practice that modern C++ has been advocating for about a decade.
Apparently, our goals differ significantly in this matter. I don't think that the primary aspiration of a language should be to become popular. Relatedly, I'm thinking of Rust as a serious infrastructure language which requires one to know what they are doing. Of course, wider adoption would be great, but in my opinion "it helps beginners" doesn't remotely hit the threshold of adding a completely new kind of syntax (or any feature) to the core language.
I'm a big advocate of education, discoverability, and the continuous improvement of tutorials and the overall documentation. Since the ownership and borrowing model is not an error in the language nor a footgun (in fact, it's the opposite), I don't think that the language is to be blamed and modified if someone didn't understand it. In my view, this is the basic difference between design errors and perhaps unpopular but beneficial features.