Hello,

I recently got interested in a phenomena I'll try to present below by example of my country. Basically it's about making totally illogical plans and investments due to some sort of national pride. And I'm not talking here about one or two political campaign promises or some misplaced funding. What I have on mind is repeating with mindset of recidivist the same thing over decades despite obvious failure. It's about projects that ate so much pride, money and political assurances that stopping them would be unthinkable.

I'm from Poland and my country has at least two blatantly failed industrial aspirations:

Firstly we have coal mining that is not only ecological concern, but also unprofitable. We are better off buying australian coal, yet we have whole mining region (Silesia) that is dedicated for that purpose. Every government tries to appease miners by continuing dropping money into mining shafts (btw owned by government). Not only is this stopping Poland from moving away from coal, it literally keeps whole energetic sector in stalemate that costs money and ecology.

Second is our shipbuilding industry

We have hilarious history (in last 30 years) of state-owned shipyards that are being resurrected every 10 years or so. In 2001 our PM started project of building 6 modern military corvettes. After much money and 18 years we got 1. More recently (4 years ago) our PM once more promised revival of entire industry by making ferryboat destined for courses between Poland and Sweden. It should swim by now, yet its construction hasn't even started.

And yet all Poles know about great Polish shipyards that once were. There are thousands of workers demanding government support. And people pretend that they believe.

So I'm really curious - what about other European countries? Knowing how crazy Europe is, I'm sure every state has its own tales of ambitions that people couldn't let go.