Good enough as in constant burden but not bad enough to fail the whole project.

> Good enough as in constant burden

Are they, though? Or are you just trying to put up a strawman?

Because I assure you plenty of highly reliable infrastructure is running 24-7 without the faintest concern over normalization.

> Or are you just trying to put up a strawman?

Writing from personal experience. I can also assure you that a lot of this highly reliable infrastructure works only because a lot of tears and cursing that could have avoided if the designers had any idea what they were doing.