I hate this kind of premature defeatism

This is what "the tragedy of the commons" was all about in pre-Victorian England. Rich people decried the existence of land held and used by all the people of a community, claiming that it couldn't work in practice because eventually some asshole would always take it all for themselves. Turns out they were the some asshole, seizing all the commons for themselves as private property (a process known as "enclosure"), ending many centuries of actually successful common usage of land.