All wealth (negentropy/complexity) creation creates debt.
Whenever we build, we use intelligence to rearrange things in more complex ways that don't naturally occur. Ideally, this creates value by unlocking things we want that we previously couldn't have.
But this work always creates a burden on the future (debt) to maintain the complexity we built. This is especially true if the complexity doesn't gracefully degrade back to a more primitive state and the choices of people coming after you are "maintain" or "collapse and regress back further than your predecessor started, because you've forgotten the old ways".
If you don't want to place this burden on the future, then the only surefire solution is to not build anything. Just be happy with maintaining what you have and hope that the environment doesn't change around you so much that what you have isn't good enough.
But I don't think this is what we want. We need to build a LOT more for some of the existential goals we have as a civilization.
Just know that every act of creation that sticks around intrinsically creates a burden on the future to maintain it.
A concrete example of this conflict that I've been wrestling with recently. I've been considering going all in on home automation. Zigbee devices and sensors everywhere managed with custom rules on Home Assistant. I want to get to the point where I don't ever have to touch a light switch.
However, I also recognize stories of others who have done this, and then died leaving their less technical spouse with an unmaintainable mess that gradually degrades and falls to Entropy. They eventually have to hire someone to rip it all out and revert to a dumb house.
By going all in on home automation, I'm creating debt for future me and my partner to maintain it all. At the moment, I'm not convinced that this act of creation will actually create enough value to justified the debt incurred.
Whenever we build, we use intelligence to rearrange things in more complex ways that don't naturally occur. Ideally, this creates value by unlocking things we want that we previously couldn't have.
But this work always creates a burden on the future (debt) to maintain the complexity we built. This is especially true if the complexity doesn't gracefully degrade back to a more primitive state and the choices of people coming after you are "maintain" or "collapse and regress back further than your predecessor started, because you've forgotten the old ways".
If you don't want to place this burden on the future, then the only surefire solution is to not build anything. Just be happy with maintaining what you have and hope that the environment doesn't change around you so much that what you have isn't good enough.
But I don't think this is what we want. We need to build a LOT more for some of the existential goals we have as a civilization.
Just know that every act of creation that sticks around intrinsically creates a burden on the future to maintain it.
Acknowledge and respect that, but keep building.