Tech debt works great when it's done on purpose, and when the people/management who take it on are the same one who eventually deal with it. It takes a level of organization maturity to do that though.

What unfortunately happens a lot is orgs taking on tech debt without realizing it (devs are too junior, or management doesn't listen to devs, or various other reasons). Then 1-2 years later, the system is falling apart and the old engineers are gone. The new ones just call it tech debt as this kind of unavoidable force of nature that was dropped on them (because it kind of was).

Or worse, the devs of old ARE still there, but pretend that after 1-2 years, its inevitable for a system to be falling apart and needing to be rewritten from scratch.

This level of industry immaturity prevents the tech debt concept from fully working.

In organization where tech debt IS a fully thought out and planned out compromise to get value today at some cost to be paid off later, then yeah, it not only works: it's often the right thing to do.