It's a shame, because there is money in it. It's just (like most sensible preventative maintenance) that the financial benefits are typically delayed. And when it comes to software, they're notoriously impossible to quantify.

Generally the only way to get it done in a corpo environment (and receive any kind of thanks or glory, as opposed to just torpedoing your own career) is to let things get so bad that production stability suffers and/or the team's ability to ship features is severely impacted.

...I realize I'm basically just echoing what you said, except more verbose. I'm venting!