The key part analogy isn't bankruptcy so much as interest. You incur technical debt and you pay it off later in interest (by spending time to clean up the hacky

The key part analogy isn't bankruptcy so much as interest. You incur technical debt and you pay it off later in interest (by spending time to clean up the hacky code). If you don't pay off the interest, you end up incurring even more technical debt. Eventually, you could end up paying several times more in interest than the principal (end up spending more time working around the hacky code than if you've just addressed the issue properly in the first place).