Not to dwell on your analogy too much, but... you may have to pay back debt eventually, and there will be accruing interest if not paid down, but debt does have

Not to dwell on your analogy too much, but... you may have to pay back debt eventually, and there will be accruing interest if not paid down, but debt does have its positives and advantages. If the system that the debt is part of as a whole is increasing in value, then hopefully the relative amount of debt and its associated interest diminishes over time. I'd say the real question is will the shortcut that leads to technical debt going to yield greater returns than the cost of the debt. And if so, over what time-frame? On the flip-side, will rejecting shortcuts and avoiding some technical debt result in getting to market later resulting in less income and losing a competitive advantage? Were these penalties far greater than cost of the shortcut? Relapsing back to the good ol' car analogy, it might be far more prudent to take on a car loan than buy the car outright. If the interest rate is low enough that it's below inflation, it's less than what your transportation costs would be without this vehicle and/or it's less than what you could be earning as interest on the money you would have put down to buy outright, then there is no harm in taking on that debt. In fact you might say a decision not to take on debt in any of these cases would be foolish. I guess the moral of the story is that not all debt is bad or equal.