> corruption does not require a project to actually deliver the promised benefits, or even to be completed at all.

Yes. Corruption only requires for the project to get started. Which is what very few useful projects experience at all. Most never get off the ground. And project getting started raises the probability that the project will be eventually finished at some point.

> And the result is a fatally flawed project that is decades late

But the alternative is not a project done right. It's a project than never got started because no one saw opportunity for personal gain in it. Think of all the places that don't have high speed rail projects, let alone high speed rail.

I know it's easy to lament inefficiencies of corruption and compare effects with other, more successful projects that possibly required less corruption to get going. But the fact is that inefficiencies are not a problem as long as there is money in the pockets. Every corporation operates with huge inefficiencies at every level except for perhaps core revenue centers. And it's fine. The problem is with starting things as an organization with money.