alt Hacker NewsYeah, our use of our military force provides some of the most obvious cases of "bad investment". Vietnam, Iraq, etc
And there are many others that might've been a positive investment from a strictly financial perspective, but not from a moral one: see Banana Republics and all those times the CIA backed military juntas.
I would argue that those bad investments (such an understatement!) were clearly lobbied for by the military-industrial complex. So yes, the state dropped the ball, big, on those. But that was because the private sector pushed for it, probably also in a big way. I would say that, even though the politicians were ultimately responsible for those calamities, the CEOs who greatly enritched themselves from them are absolutely to be blamed, too.