That's a good point. I think of any given project as a CDO. There are good, productive debts and bad, stinking, potentially crushing debts in there. What matters is not that there is debt - I think there will always be - but what the blend is.

If the debts were thoughtful and deliberate with understood risks, they might make perfect sense.

If the debts were taken by people who couldn't evaluate them and had no business making that decision, it's going to be bad.

Odds are the first are well-understood and maybe even documented. The second may explode when the underlying assumptions or risk changes.

Ref: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/cdo.asp