Debt has been branded the villain of modern finance, a scarlet letter for the reckless, the undisciplined, the desperate. Yet the deeper you look, the more the story twists. Because while the masses are taught to fear it, the powerful have learned to master it.

Debt, in their hands, is not a burden. It’s leverage, a quiet, compounding weapon of control.

We’ve been trained to equate debt with shame, to see it as the opposite of success. Pay it off, we’re told. Get ‘debt-free’, live within your means. Yet look closer at the people who built the world you live in, the property investors, the investment funds, the corporations shaping global trade, and you’ll see that almost none of them are debt-free. In fact, they’re swimming in it. By choice.

Because the game is not about avoiding debt. It’s about owning it.

The financial system rewards those who understand this, and quietly punishes those who do not. Banks do not lend to the poor because they believe in charity. They lend to those who can create, expand, and multiply value. The interest you pay on your credit card is the same tool a billionaire uses to build an empire. The difference? They use debt to make money. You use it to survive.

That’s not a moral failing. It’s design.

The entire architecture of modern capitalism is built on this asymmetry. For the poor, debt is consumption. For the wealthy, it’s creation. For the poor, it’s a prison. For the ultra wealthy, it’s a passport.

This is the quiet injustice of our era, the illusion that discipline alone can free you, while those at the top weaponise what you were told to fear. The myth of debt as moral corruption keeps the working class obedient, ashamed, and docile, afraid to play the very game that defines modern power.

So let’s shatter that illusion.

The ultra wealthy understand that money is not meant to sit idle. Every cent must move, multiply, and return. They borrow at 3% and earn 10%. They leverage appreciating assets while the average worker saves devaluing cash. Their homes, businesses, and even art collections are collateral for liquidity. They don’t sell; they borrow. Because selling means taxes and loss of control. Borrowing means power and preservation.

Then when markets crash, when ordinary people lose everything, the ultra wealthy buy again, with borrowed money.

Debt, for them, is not risk. It’s rhythm.

However, for everyone else, debt becomes the invisible leash. You’re told to take ‘good’ debt for education, for a mortgage, for a car, but those debts are designed to keep you tethered to work, consumption, and repayment. The system praises your responsibility while quietly harvesting your freedom.

Student debt delays your family dreams. Mortgage debt keeps you compliant. Credit debt feeds your status anxiety. Every repayment is a quiet tax on your time, a rent you pay for belonging to a world that insists you must prove your worth through ownership, but only ownership financed by someone else’s money.

You were not born into financial slavery. You were taught it.

Here’s the cruel genius: while you were learning to fear debt, the elite were learning to love it. They built entire ecosystems around your avoidance. They buy distressed assets from people too scared to borrow again. They profit from your shame, your ‘responsibility’, your obsession with being clean.

The phrase ‘debt-free’ is a trap wrapped in virtue. It promises peace, but offers stagnation. Because true freedom doesn’t come from having no debt, it comes from understanding how to make it serve you.

Debt is neither good nor evil. It is energy. Neutral and raw. The outcome depends entirely on whether you wield it, or whether it wields you.

So the next time someone says, “I don’t believe in debt,” listen closely. That’s not wisdom. That’s conditioning. Note, we are not condoning recklessly getting into unmanageable debt.

What if we redefined financial freedom not as the absence of debt, but as mastery over it? What if debt became your ally, a means to create and not consume? What if you stopped playing the defensive game, trying to escape debt, and instead learned to dance with it?

That’s the shift the wealthy have already made, and until you do too, the gap will only widen.

The great illusion isn’t that debt exists. It’s that it’s dangerous.

The real danger is believing you can build wealth without it.