By doing this, I am not trying to blind you to cases of government failure. I have already mentioned the series of castles in the desert built in many
developing countries in the 1960s and 70s, including Indonesia’s aircraft industry. However, it is more than that. Government attempts to pick winners
have failed even in countries that are famous for being good at it, such as Japan, France or Korea. I’ve already mentioned the French government’s illfated
foray into Concorde. In the 1960s, the Japanese government tried in vain to arrange a takeover of Honda, which it considered to be too small and
weak, by Nissan, but it later turned out that Honda was a much more successful firm than Nissan. The Korean government tried to promote the aluminiumsmelting
industry in the late 1970s, only to see the industry whacked by a massive increase in energy prices, which account for a particularly high
proportion of aluminium production costs. And they are just the most prominent examples.