digging a large hole and filling it in both require extensive manual labor—yet the net result of the procedure benefits nobody and improves nothing.
A perfect description of the Big Dig in Boston.
Not entirely. The Big Dig does benefit some, democrat crooks who fill their pockets with kick backs they get from awarding contracts to their pals.
A man of my acquantance, who worked for a bank in Boston, had an office window, as it happened, that overlooked a portion of the Big Dig. One day he noticed that they were commencing a new lane right next to one that they had just completed.
During a break he went out and approached a supervisor, a large man with a cigar in his mouth, visibly (dare we say it) of Irish descent. He asked the man why they had not just built two lanes to begin with. The supervisor took his cigar out of his mouth and looked at my friend in amazement. "I don't think you understand," he said, "this is a whole 'nother project!"
There you have the American Labor theory of value.