And just like buying a house - despite the asset being collateral for the loan and generally having net positive equity, the individual is personally incentivized to keep making the interest payments "or else". Or else you lose the house and still need a place to live, or else Twitter gets foreclosed upon and the ego driven project turns into a failure.

I think it's a striking demonstration of the perils of living above your means. If we take the definition of "poor" as the inability to pay for one's monthly upkeep, it's possible for Musk to simultaneously be the richest and the poorest person in the world.

And sure, he could always increase his investment by using more personal funds to make the interest payments, taking the longer term view (whether business or idealistic based). But the fact is that he hasn't, and has been framing this situation exactly as Twitter needing to immediately service that debt.