Bad practices increase cash-on-hand at the expense of long-term outlook. That cash-on-hand can be funnelled into more bad practices. It's kind of like a wooden

Bad practices increase cash-on-hand at the expense of long-term outlook. That cash-on-hand can be funnelled into more bad practices. It's kind of like a wooden building burning down: something that was previously in stable, long-term equilibrium state (no fire, no energy release, serving a useful purpose) switches suddenly to a runaway reaction (exponentially accelerating, pulling in more and more reactants from the environment, serving no useful purpose.)