One of the biggest fallacies I see in this space is people looking at an observability standard like otel and thinking "I must enable all of that".

You really don't have to.

Throw away traces. Throw away logs. Sample those metrics. The standard gives you capabilities, it doesn't force you to use them. Tune based on your risk appetite, constraints, and needs.

My other favourite retort to "look how expensive the observability is" is "have you quantified how expensive not having it is". But I reserve that one for obtuse bean counters :)