>If tech debt is important it will show up in a ticket.

That's like saying "everything is well-understood and well-planned".

You raise the issue with the decision makers but if they decide not to prioritize it I wouldn't personally take responsibility.

Tech debt is project debt not developer debt

This is how you get tech debt worded as users stories that don't make any sense, with confused PMs that don't know how to prioritize it vs features because the affect on the product is not clear.

or a product with millions of users is scrapped, happened at my org.