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Taking on debt to pay for billion dollar websites (pick a number, anything north of low 10^6 is obscene), stupid wars, nation building and, to lump it all toget

• spinchange 11y ago
  You raise a fair point, but it is relevant to that extent that dumb spending, when financed, adds interest expense to the stupidity, and is often the catalyst / what facilitated the dumb spending to begin with. It can be a multiplier of 'dumb.'
• rebootthesystem 11y ago
  The question here was "Is debt good?". My observation was that debt is acceptable --and even good-- if, and only if, the person or organization has a historical track record and culture of efficient use of capital and will, in fact, continue to use capital efficiently after incurring further debt. The examples I provided are but a few from a huge list showing we are not efficient. In that context, yes, the examples are absolutely relevant. I have personally been involved in several government contract bids where I saw how government actors, systems and procedures managed to pay twice as much than market rate for items being procured. The waste present in government spending is likely to be of staggering proportions. It's like borrowing money to buy a truck for your business and paying twice market rate for the truck. The reality is that this hypothetical business probably wouldn't have needed extra cash had it been responsible about capital utilization throughout it's history.