[chezlaw]

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What definition of happiness are you going to use when you try to maximize it?

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"Happiness" means not just pleasure, but joy, peace, contentment, and well-being. Suffering is the opposite of that.

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just showing that utilitarianism assumes centralized decision making (someone picks the "best" utility-distribution scheme) is enough to discredit it.

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I think utilitarianism is a good thought for personal morality. And, if everyone used it, I think the world would be a much better place. The biggest problem is trying to weigh everyone's "happiness" level. So, really, it's just a way to remind you to be considerate & compassionate of all the people your actions affect.

I don't think a centralized government would be able to control this very well in a large society -- much like they couldn't control the economy very well either. In a small society, such as the island, it may be possible, though. There would be no need for a republic, a pure democracy could work just fine. So, the decision making would be distributed -- to all the inhabitants of the island.

Again, it would only maximize happiness, if others wanted everyone to be happy. This is key -- and unfortunately, I'm quite jaded by my experiences, but try to maintain my idealism -- I'm not sure why.

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I've been letting this go for a bit, but I think your ideas of maximising personal happiness (which is slighly misleading but we agree on) is inconsistent with the idea of wanting to maximise everyone's happiness.

They could be consistent if it would maximise your happiness if everyone else was as happy as possible but there doesn't seem any reason to believe that's true. In fact, the happiness of a few people is so important to your happiness that the happiness of the rest quickly becomes of small (not necessarily zero) importance.

I also claim (counter-intuitively) that the best way for everybody to be happy is to not try to maximise everyone's happiness when making decisions.

chez