That's a rationalization, not a rationale. Every project can have useful byproducts, and nobody's rationale is to start a dumb one trillion dollar project rathe

That's a rationalization, not a rationale. Every project can have useful byproducts, and nobody's rationale is to start a dumb one trillion dollar project rather than a smart one. The reason why this exists is obviously that these projects are started by absolute rulers who want to build themselves vanity monuments the same way their ancient predecessors did.