The Dead Horse Theory is a testimony of bureaucratic insanity. Like the story of Berlin Brandenburg Airport. After almost fifteen years of planning and five years of construction, it was finally set to open in October 2011. It did not. Despite its completion, serious construction defects kept delaying the opening. An epic odyssey began. Many years and billions of Euros were spent on fixing the issues and on keeping the project alive.

In 2014, German parody news outlet Der Postillon reported that the brand-new airport was now being demolished again. Purportedly, it had been deemed cheaper than fixing the structure. In 2018, reality caught up with satire when it was actually considered to rebuild the whole thing completely.

This national embarrassment strikes me as a perfect example of the Dead Horse Theory, a meme built around an idiom on the appropriate handling of deceased hoofed animals. If you’ve ever worked in government or the private sector, you may be all too familiar with similar projects running on life support.