[lbriner]

The problem with this is people investing their time/expertise/money/energy into the common good and then have a small number of people ruining the benefit for their own ends, knocks the well-meaning out of the most positive people. The common good only works well when everyone wants the common good.

[willturman]

You seem to have independently discovered the market failure commonly know as the Free-rider problem, for which there are many solutions, and which is not a dispositive preemptive argument against the establishment or management of common good(s).

For example, Elinor Ostrom won a Nobel Prize for her work illuminating design principles illustrated by long enduring common pool resource institutions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elinor_Ostrom#%22Design_princi...

[yoyohello13]

Ah, then my second wish will be for everyone to want the common good.

[aleph_minus_one]

> Ah, then my second wish will be for everyone to want the common good.

People have very different, often contradictory opinions what the "common good" is.

I would even claim that this question is a special case of the millennia-old philosophical problem of defining what "good" actually means (i.e. defining ethics), which has resulted in myriads of different opinions:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_ethics