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Originally Posted by Polydamas
GURPS Magic carefully defines an economic framework for wizards (daily wages for enchanters, job charts), it carefully lays out spells useful in daily life, it carefully focuses magic on small local effects, and it carefully encourages smart players to focus on 'utility' spells over offensive or buffs that just make sense in game-mechanical terms (you don't need GURPS rules to understand what Invisibility or Might does, you need D&D mechanics to understand Bless or Prayer). Complaining that players and GMs, gasp, follow those invitations is perverse.
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One economic framework, it presumes that mages are relatively common and knowledge of magic generally available. The same book makes it clear that changing the rules changes the economics. As GURPS has a bent toward simulation, you're invited to alter the rules to simulate the kind of story you want.
Many low level GURPS spells are great for a small party traveling in a wilderness. Spells like
Shape Earth and
Earth to Stone can be the salvation of a small party of adventurers.
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In contrast, D&D magic gives you a list of spells focused on adventuring and encourages you not to think about how low-level spells affect the world ... some recent editions even remove the practical spells like Tenser's Floating Disk or Create Food from the normal magic rules. In D&D, dream-castles are built by archmages in a few days, not by a dozen journeymen over several months.
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D&D is about telling one type of story. Mainly the kind of Sword and Sorcery tales being reprinted from Weird Tales in the 1960s with a certain Tolkien influence. Neither Tolkien, Howard, nor T.H. White, saw magic as an everyday thing. However, even Le Guin, who has Ged raised by the village witch, moved magic more into the everyday world. In Earthsea, mages could be hired. Neither Tolkien nor White would have a Wizard for hire. Howard might have a wizard as a member of the court, but not in worlds where anyone got a pay envelope. Heck Dunsany has wage mages in his stories as does Baum and Nesbit. It's about the flavor of the setting. Too many metaphysics baked in, and too many worlds are excluded.