[flangola7]

Taking on debt you don't need is a fundamental failure of personal responsibility

[WJW]

For an individual, perhaps. Even there some exceptions can be found though: taking on a mortgage to buy a house can be the right decision even though you could keep on renting and don't technically need to take on the debt.

For a business it gets much muddier: do they "need" to take on debt if it makes them more competitive in the market? A company with a well optimized capital structure containing both debt and equity can be much more profitable than a company without, and can use those extra profits to out-compete companies that are less efficient.

[JackFr]

As long as corporate finance has existed, the fundamental question, indeed the only question is what is the optimal capital structure for the firm.