Do you have any historical examples of this? As I believe in opposite.

Tragedy of the commons is a thing for a reason.

Why do you think that a lot of people want "small government"? The state/government is by definition in those "commons".

Regarding examples, they're countless. Think of petty tyrants fighting over the remains of the Byzantine Empire just as about the Ottomans were about to conquer it. Almost every falling empire had this behavior going on, selfish people "getting theirs" just before the fall.

It's human nature, unfortunately.

The government isn't really part of "the commons" at all:

> "The opinions of 90% of Americans have essentially no impact at all [on what becomes law]."

https://act.represent.us/sign/the-problem/

It is of the commons. That's the problem. If the government were pmiller2's property, nobody could take it over, you'd defend it.

But because the government/state is ill-defined and shared, it can be abused and it's much harder to do anything about it.

Private property is selfish but efficient and clearly separated from the rest (in general) while public property is altruistic, not that efficient and generally not that well delineated from the rest.

Our government has more characteristics of private property than the commons, then.

And new regime is usually coming to get rich fast, not fight for a noble goal achievable in 100 years. Even if leaders are naive idealists, usually the masses get behind them for a quick buck.

I love evolution of USSR for this reason. First the masses took down Tsarist regime to take property of the rich. Then masses took down Soviet regime to privatise the property. Both events happened because life was shit and people were looking for a quick way to live better.

Take a look at any (r)evolution. Pretty much every time people took "get rich soon" over hippy paradise. French revolution, Soviet revolution, Dissolution of USSR, Hitler coming to power...

Do you have any arguments to believe in the other option?