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What practical policies could politicians enact that would increase overall utility? When I say "practical", I'm specifically ruling out policies that would increase utility but which would be unpopular, since no democratic polity would implement them.
(The background to this question is that I stand a reasonable chance of being elected to the Scottish Parliament in 19 months time).
Ruling out unpopular measures is tantamount to giving up on your job as a politician; the equivalent of an individual ruling out any avenues to achieving their goals that require some effort.
Much as rationality in an individual consists of "shutting up and multiplying", i.e. computing which course of action including those we have no taste for yields the highest expected utility, politics - the useful part of it - consists of making necessary policies palatable to the public. The rest is demagoguery.
On the contrary, NOT ruling out unpopular measures is tantamount to giving up your job as a politician because, if the measure is unpopular enough (1) you won't get the measure passed in the first place, and (2) you won't get re-elected
You're saying it's lazy to require that policies be practical. I say that on the contrary it's lazy not to require them to be practical. It's easy to come up with ideas that're a good thing but which can't be practically realised, but it takes more effort to come up with ideas that're a good thing and which can be practically realised. I co-founded Pirate Party UK precisely because I think it's a practical way of getting the state to apply sensible laws to the internet, instead of just going ahead with whatever freedom-destroying nonsense the entertainment industry is coming up this week to prevent "piracy".
Courses of action that can't be implemented yield zero or negative utility.
There's an element of truth in that, but I'd put it differently: its the difference between leadership and followership. Politicians in democracies frequently engage in the latter.
Free trade. As a politician, you can't do more than that.
And open immigration policies
Unlimited immigration clearly fails the practicality test, regardless of whether it's a good thing or not.
open != unlimited. But that's a margin that I would push pretty hard, relative to others.
OK I misinterpreted you. What do you mean when you say "open"?
I should have said more open.
I'd guess that legalizing gay marriage would be pretty low-hanging fruit, but I don't know how politically possible it is.
It's hard to think of a policy which would have a smaller impact on a smaller fraction of the wealthiest population on earth. And it faces extremely dedicated opposition.
Well, I mean "low-hanging fruit" in that it doesn't really cost any money to implement. Symbolism is cheap; providing material benefits is more expensive, especially in developed countries.
I don't know much about the political situation in Scotland; I know about a few miscellaneous stupidities in the U.S. federal government that I'd like to get rid of (abstinence-only sex education, "alternative" medicine research) but I suspect that Scotland and the rest of the U.K. is stupid in different ways than the U.S. is.
Gay marriage is already legal in Scotland, albeit under the name "civil partnership".
The whole of the UK has civil partnership, not just Scotland. It's also illegal to discriminate on gender attraction in employment and in the provision of goods and services.