Forever incomplete: Keeping a master plan alive

In this presentation I will tell the story of a master plan that never succeeded nor failed. Rather, it died with its author and thus will remain forever
incomplete. What are the implications of such a status, of a permanent in-between? My argument will be that it keeps alive the promise of the
superlative: that there can be - and might yet come about - an ultimate solution. Quite paradoxically, it thus reinforces the definition of the problem.
The plan I will talk about was made by engineers with a political conviction. In particular, Juan Carlos Montenegro was convinced that the country he called
his home - Bolivia - was the way it was because of its natural resources. More specifically, he understood that its history of exporting raw materials had kept
his country in poverty. This is what he called extractivism, and to overcome it indeed required a master plan. Lithium offered the opportunity he had been hoping for: it was new and unconventional and in high demand; and Bolivia had a lot of it. The plan was to build a whole industry around it that would produce much more, not just lithium. It was not his plan alone, but had become part of an entire government, along with Juan Carlos. Yet, before it could be put into practice - before the whole industry could be built - the government fell. It got up again later, with other plans for lithium. Juan Carlos could not. He died, for his plan to remain alive.