He was writing for a different target audience gwern. Consider this an open letter to disappointed mostly God fearing conservatives from an atheist reactionary. I still found it emotionally appealing for reasons I explained in other comments. I don't doubt Moldbug wrote it under an emotional affect as I said elsewhere. I'm kind of disappointed that you read "debt" as literally as you seem to have. To de-pack the secular non-moralistic argument as I read it:

"We have been chipping away at the foundations of institutions we barely understand for centuries now, burning up inherited civilizational capital . The Romney's and even Obama's of the world are good enough managers to help treat the symptoms but not the causes of this for years or even decades to come, helping us to pretend that the fundamentals are sound while they get much worse."