[beager]

One aspect of systemic debt that tracks well with technical debt (and most forms of "debt") is that paying down that debt requires you to confront the risk-averse and fearful tendencies of your organization/nation.

The more fearful and risk-averse approach will lock things into a local optimization with tremendous support costs and will accrue debt very fast. The bold approach will break out of the local maximum, but probably upset the apple cart.

[agar]

Based on the current gray color, this response has seen quite a few down votes. I wonder why?

It essentially restates the premise of the article, and is reasonably accurate from my experience. ("upset the apple cart" may understate the risks of a "ground up" rewrite, but there are plenty of "bold approaches" that are less dramatic).

It would be nice if down voters replied, it could be an interesting discussion.