I agree with you that open communication is vital to correct prioritization. But one good way to resolve that problem is to agree up front that there's a bunch

I agree with you that open communication is vital to correct prioritization. But one good way to resolve that problem is to agree up front that there's a bunch of small stuff that's just not worth getting business stakeholders educated about, and that they should trust professional technical judgment as to how to spend some of the project time. And I think technical debt is a fine metaphor, because the term gives non-technical people useful intuitions about what is normally invisible to them. E.g., they can take it on when needed, pay it down as available, declare "bankruptcy" via rewrites. And if they don't pay it down, it will consume more of the "income", constraining future choices.