A few months ago, I was listening to some sort of talk radio, and they were discussing Cuba’s economy, which was very slowly introducing a few little bits of capitalism, albeit heavily-regulated capitalism. And they managed to get an interview with Fidel Castro’s daughter (I think?), who talked pretty eloquently about the economy. She seemed much more progressive than her father or uncle, albeit still in favor of Cuban Socialism.

The interviewer seemed to try to trick her into admitting that socialism was flawed. And her answer (paraphrased) is the subject of this blog post:

“Of course it’s imperfect. While I believe socialism is perfect in theory, it’s very hard to put that theory into motion accurately. So we’re continually fine-tuning our implementation of it.”

While I’m sure it’s debateable whether socialism is a sound theory or not, the reasoning struck me as interesting. And it so accurately applies to a few other topics.

• School vouchers. I used to be a gung-ho fan of them. What’s better than bringing the power–if not the magic–of the free market to the school system? But in practice, it seems that, time and time again, school voucher programs have led to the good students getting out of failing schools, leaving the failing schools, and most of the students, even worse off. So vouchers are a great idea, in theory. But at least so far, the implementations of it seem to work about as well as Cuban Socialism.
• Tasers for cops. They’re meant as a non-lethal alternative, after most other means of force have been exhausted. As a conflict escalates, the police are justified in using more and more force to try to stop it. And tasers are supposed to come right before “baton to the skull” or “strangulation” on that scale of force. In that case, they’re quire effective, saving lives and preventing permanent injury. In practice, they’re consistently misused.
• Content filters in schools and libraries. It’s far too easy to bump into porn when you’re not looking for it. Ensuring that young children doing research don’t accidentally end up at hard-core porn sites is a good thing. In practice, content filters seem to block myriad legitimate sites and get in the way of legitimate research.

I’m sure the concept applies to ten thousand other things, too, but these are off the top of my head. But I think “a perfect idea–in theory” is a pretty useful concept to have in mind in describing ideas.