This was what I don't get about the "we just keep using debt" argument.

Let's say you live in Podunk, Missouri, and the town is split by a river with a ferry. The people of the town get fed up with the ferry and decide they want a bridge, but it'll cost 50 Bitcoin. No one person has that much and nobody outside the town wants the bridge, so a group of them decide to ground a Bridge Building Society and they pool their money (40 Bitcoin) and get some discounts on building materials from the local carpenter and stonemason (3 Bitcoin worth) and some volunteers to help with the construction (7 Bitcoin worth). In return, they grant themselves and their immediate families and supporters/volunteers the right to use the bridge free of tolls for 20 years and those who contributed money are to receive whatever toll-money is netted at the end of the year, for 20 years. To speed up receipt of tolls, they quickly build a wooden bridge and start collecting, while the steel/stone bridge is being built slowly over 5 years.

My argument was that the tolls probably wouldn't return the full 40 Bitcoin, within any reasonable amount of time, and that the Bitcoin payers would be fine with that because they get to use the bridge.

But I was told that they would just borrow the 40 Bitcoin and pay 10% interest for them and then pay the 40 Bitcoin back with interest after 5 years, which would be 60 Bitcoin. And those Bitcoin each contain more potential purchasing power than the originally invested ones because 6 years have passed.

And I think most people would just rather keep riding the ferry. 🤷‍♀️ The tolls already didn't cover the 40 Bitcoin investment because it's a bridge out in the swamp and not over Chesapeake Bay, and now you've added 20 Bitcoin on top.

I can't get an explanation for where the 20+ Bitcoin come from.

Most large loans have no explanation for where the interest comes from, under fiat, and that seems even less plausibel under Bitcoin.

People who want a bridge will just pay for a bridge.