One thing I think wonky people tend to ignore is transition costs. My particular version of utopia, if built from scratch, might have a particular policy mix, but as awesome as my utopia might be, getting from here to there wouldn't necessarily be that simple. Even really horrible policies can be so costly and complicated to change, in theory and especially in practice, that perhaps it's best to leave them in place.
One example is the state monopoly on wine and liquor in my state. I see no good reason for the state to own that business. The businesses aren't very well run, either from a "making lots of money" perspective or "making customers happy" perspective. But having said that, I'm pretty tepid about privatizing it. There are existing stakeholders, people who have made careers out of working in the liquor system, whose lives would be overturned. A revenue stream the state counts would be curtailed or made more unpredictable, at least in the near term.
Sure in theory I could design my utopian transition to a liquor sales privatization. Existing stakeholders could be compensated, one way or another. Taxes and license fees could be set up to maintain revenues for the state. The system could designed with sufficient competition to ensure that it would be good for customers and not simply a handout to well-connected individuals. However, on balance I tend to favor maintaining the current system on the grounds that transitioning would be costly and what replaces it likely won't be that much better for most of us.
