Why is perfection not important? Because we are human, and to poorly quote an 80s song, "I am only human. Of flesh and blood I am made. Born to make mistakes". That being the case, no matter what system(s) we employ it will not work perfectly. Whether the system is education, infrastructure, health care, safety, etc. It will have flaws in it. It will have flaws because it will be designed by people, run by people, and it will be for people. Whatever system we employ, we can only hope to improve it with time and try to work towards helping the most people and provide the most benefits to society as a whole. Maybe this is the meaning of life to a certain extent. The goal of humans is to work towards providing systems that provide the most benefits to all, and progress the race as a whole.
One of the arguments of Conservatives is the elimination of government progams because they are inefficient and wasteful. Conservatives do not want to improve the health care system, or the education system, or whatever government run program is in place, they want to eliminate it (except the military, that can stay as it is), and typically replace it with nothing or some type of privatization, because, as we all know, the market-corporations do things better (sarcasm, if you can't read it). The main reason Conservatives want elimination of these programs/systems is not very noble. It is so they don't have to pay taxes.
I work for a company that makes hardware-software. Guess what? Stuff doesn't work correctly 100% of the time. Hell, it would be nice if stuff worked right 50% of the time. There are issues all the time, big surprise. Why? because these systems are designed and built by human beings, so there will be issues. I find it interesting when people get mad, visibly angry, and frustrated with thier cell phones or computers when something goes wrong. Not surpising these devices have issues, we build millions of these devices, that run different software platforms. They are going to be issues with them. Do we we stop making them and throw them out because they are not perfect? No. Maybe we should for other reasons, but not because they are imperfect. Maybe this is a bad analog, but hopefully it makes a point.
Conservatives argue that there should be no food stamps, because people cheat-misuse them. They argue that unemployment benefits should be very short term or none at all, because they make people lazy. Then they cite individual cases where it happens. It is proven, that both food stamps and unemployment benefits, provide the most economic benefits during a recession, but we should throw them out anyway, because Conservatives can cite a few cases where people misuse a system. Whenever you bring up the faults with private enterprise, individual executives, or entire corporations, they tell you that it is individuals that cause the problems, or that if there was less regulations the system would work better.
So, as we all know, corporations are not perfect, and the products they make are not perfect. Something we are all well aware of. So, why should systems, services, programs, setup for the benefit of people be perfect. Especially when the purpose of these programs is not profit, but to benefit society. The reason for an education system is not profit, but education. The reason for a health care system where everyone actually gets treatment, good treatment, should not be profit, but improvement of health and wellness. The reason for improvements in infrastructure is not profit, but so people can get from point A to point B safely and in a reasonable amount of time. In the case of infrastructure, a byproduct is profit for construction companies and civil design firms.
One of the most interesting things, I think, that Conservatives fail to see is that all these government run, not for profit programs, allow for-profit corporations to thrive and survive. Without public education and infrastructure, you don't have educated employees to make products and you don't have the means to get your product from one place to another. If health care stops being about profit, and instead it becomes about prevention, treatment and care, it would help corporations, it would help the "market" even more. Healthy children, and healthy adults, all make for better students and better, more productive workers.
The biggest hinderance to progress is not the government, it is an ideology. An ideology that mistakenly puts individuals over the masses, mistakenly puts profit before people, and an ideology that places corporations, the "market" and wealth above all.