It Looks Good on Paper, but It's Not

I've mentioned it before, and I'll mention it again. The only reason why something can look good on paper but work out badly in "the real world" is because either

A. the person who thought that it looked good on paper didn't really understand it or
B. Whatever looked good on paper was not completely put on paper or
C. Both A. and B.

In the case of the first possibility (A.), let's consider communism. Many people think that it's a great idea but that it just fails in its application. But communism doesn't look good on paper. It fails to understand the importance of property. It errors in its assessment of labor's value. And it makes myriad other social, political, and economic blunders too numerous and, quite frankly obvious (if you really think about them) to list in this forum.

In the case of (B.), let's take a look at blind dates. People like to set friends up with other friends. In doing so, they tell both friends how great the other is, and they leave out less desirable details. I recall my wife and I (though we were dating at the time) setting up a friend of hers from Albion College with a friend of ours from Hillsdale. We told my wife's friend what a great guy "John Doe" was, that he was really nice, smart, and had a great sense of humor (all true). However, we omitted the fact that he was quite bald, though only in his early-twenties (he had spent some time in the army prior to his studies at Hillsdale). This turned out to be a problem. She didn't want to date a bald guy. He only seemed good on paper because we only put on paper what we knew she would like to see. The same is true, I assume, for many of those personal ads in the newspaper.

Then there's case (C.), and maybe most cases of "It looks good on paper" are actually this (a combination of A. and B.). Consider the war in Iraq. On paper The United States could clearly defeat Saddam's armis, and it did. What the war hawks either didn't realize or didn't mention was how difficult it would be to maintain an orderly conquest. Take your pick on that one. Either they were carelessly naive, or purposefully deceitful--knowing that once American soldiers were there, they wouldn't be pulled out.

So if something looks good on paper but turns out to be a disaster in action, it was either never good on paper or doctored to look good on paper (think photoshop).