Here in Japan, the government is surely also corrupt, with "bridges to nowhere" and construction contracts assigned on a buddy-buddy basis. But at least here that corruption still nets us well-maintained roads and top-notch train infrastructure... just arguably too much of it and at a high cost. In the US they end up with the high costs but none of the good infrastructure...
Sounds bad but the outcome is more or less as follows, if my rather vague memory (I was in said school when it opened ;), and finding summaries of local events from the 70s on the internet is not straightforward) is accurate:
* some combination of the village's mayor and/or builder went to jail
* the village residents had to pay extra taxes to cover the overbuilt school's costs
* growing up, I had a really nice school (nice play yard, lots of classroom space, dedicated gym, swimming pool with adjustable depth so regular swimming lessons, etc)
* eventually, the population of the village increased enough that the school was actually a useful size (it's more than quadrupled, from the mid 300s to ~1600, since the 70s)
It feels like somehow the failures modes of "bad government" are less bad than they could be ("at least we got something for our corruption!").
eh compare to italy where instead of overbuilding they either cheat on the materials used or skip controls and evaluations...
again http://www.leggo.it/photos/HIGH/61/62/1726162_studente.jpg
and again https://bl24-bitrecallsrl.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/...
and again http://www.meteoweb.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/terremoto-...
every time a quake strikes some public building goes down and almost every time nobody does a day of jail, unless it's small fishes.
so well there are bad failure modes as well.
Some years ago a small rural town in Spain twinned with a similar town in Greece. The mayor of the Greek town visited the Spanish town. When he saw the palatial mansion belonging to the Spanish mayor, he wondered aloud how on earth he could afford such a house.
The Spaniard replied: ‘You see that bridge over there? The EU gave us a grant to construct a two-lane bridge, but by building a single lane bridge with traffic lights at either end, I could build this place.’
The following year the Spaniard visited the Greek town. He was simply amazed at the Greek mayor's house: gold taps, marble floors, diamond doorknobs, it was marvellous.
When he asked how he’d raised the money to build this incredible house, the Greek mayor said: ‘You see that bridge over there?’
The Spaniard replied: ‘No.’
But it always saddens my heart that we insist on these stereotypes and hardly mention how other countries are "legally" siphoning taxpayer's money out to corporations by becoming tax havens and they're supposed to be a good example on how to handle taxpayer's money. The thing is, they're actually just better at stealing for their friends :)
Netherlands, I'm looking at you.