Anyone else think people over emphasize technical debt?

I think technical debt gets a bad rap I think it can be a good thing depending on the situation.

Like financial debt you borrow against your future self to get to some goal that you otherwise could not get to. For instance if you are Ford you might borrow money to buy aluminum, steel, rubber and input goods to make cars. Then you sell the cars for a profit and pay back the debt. As long as you dont rely on the debt, you should be in good shape.

In tech we use tech debt to take shortcuts to get the product "working" more quickly than it otherwise would take. We ignore security risks, make unorganized code changes, reduce testing and validation to get a product out quickly. The result is we get a product now (our car) in exchange for issues down the road, our tech debt.

Taking on the debt is okay in some situations.

-You are in an early stage startup and their is no guarantee that you will exist in a few years. You take on the tech debt in hopes the company will have more resources or time to deal with the debt when it needs to. In exchange for a product now that works and is hopefully revenue generating.

Tech debt is bad in other situations.

-You are in a company that is has a profitable stable product. The request is to add a new feature. By taking on tech debt now you risk both the profitability and the stability of the product. While the added feature is nice, regressing in quality could have financial and reputational risks associated with it. (Boeing MCAS system as extreme example)

Anyways TLDR my thought is that tech debt use should mirror the financials of the company. Are you a startup with a few employees? Push as much buggy code as you can out, you need a working product and you might not be around to see the consequences of tech debt. Late stage Fortune 500 company? The feature request is not worth jeopardizing the reputation and financials of the company. Push back deadlines and make sure you put in the time to test, patch security holes and leave the code in a clean working state.

Any thoughts on this take?